Monday, December 17, 2007

Newman Xeno

Without too much dexterity, one can draw a bold line between Newman Xeno, Casanova's enemy/employer, and Zeno of Elea. In dealing (however hamhanded) with travel between dimensions, crossover events, Xeno's "paradox backwash" and Zeno's "paradoxes of plurality" both concern themselves with existence in multiple states and the resultant logical fallacies. While Zeno dismisses the possibility of plurality, Xeno meddles with it, having mastered its maniupulation. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has this to say about Zeno's understanding of Plurality:

" This first argument, given in Zeno's words according to Simplicius, attempts to show that there could not be many things, on pain of contradiction. Assume then that there are many things. First, he says that any collection must contain some definite number of things, neither more nor fewer. But if you have a definite number of things, he further concludes, you must have a finite — ‘limited’ — number of them; he implicitly assumes that to have infinitely many things is not to have any particular number of them. Second, imagine any collection of things arranged in space — imagine them lined up in one dimension for definiteness. Between and two of them, he claims, is a third; and in between these three elements another two; and another four between these five; and so on without end. Therefore the limited collection is also ‘unlimited’, which is a contradiction, and hence our original assumption must be false: there are not many things after all. At least, so Zeno's reasoning runs."


More on Zeno: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/#ParPlu

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