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An Essay in Honor of Adolf Grünbaum’s Ninetieth Birthday: A Reexamination of Zeno’s Paradox of Extension

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Philip Ehrlich
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Abstract

We suggest that, far from establishing an inconsistency in the standard theory of the geometrical linear continuum, Zeno’s Paradox of Extension merely establishes an inconsistency between the standard theory of geometrical magnitude and a misguided system of length measurement. We further suggest that our resolution of Zeno’s paradox is superior to Adolf Grünbaum’s now standard resolution based on Lebesgue measure theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 81 , Issue 4 , October 2014 , pp. 654 - 675
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

The initial version of this article was presented in 1984 at the APA Pacific Meeting in Long Beach, California, in response to an early version of Sherry (1988), and except for early colloquia presentations the ideas contained therein lay dormant till more recent years when they were presented and expanded on at the California Institute of Technology, the University of Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh International Fellows Conference at Ohio University, Brooklyn College, the Ohio State University, and PSA 2012. Thanks are owed to John Baldwin, Arthur Fine, and a referee for helpful comments that improved the exposition, and to Brian Skyrms, who was instrumental in having us invited to respond to Sherry.

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