The Motion Paradox: The 2,500-Year Old Puzzle Behind All the Mysteries of Time and Space by Joseph Mazur (PDF)

Description

The epic tale of an ancient, unsolved puzzle and how it relates to all scientific attempts to explain the basic structure of the universe At the dawn of science the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno formulated his paradox of motion, and amazingly, it is still on the cutting edge of all investigations into the fabric of reality. Zeno used logic to argue that motion is impossible, and at the heart of his maddening puzzle is the nature of space and time. Is space-time continuous or broken up like a string of beads? Over the past two millennia, many of our greatest minds—including Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and other current theoreticians—have been gripped by the mystery this puzzle represents. Joseph Mazur, acclaimed author of Euclid in the Rainforest, shows how historic breakthroughs in our understanding of motion shed light on Zeno’s paradox. The orbits of the planets were explained, the laws of motion were revealed, the theory of relativity was discovered—but the basic structure of time and space remained elusive. In the tradition of Fermat’s Enigma and Zero, The Motion Paradox is a lively history of this apparently simple puzzle whose solution—if indeed it can be solved—will reveal nothing less than the fundamental nature of reality.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Arrived fairly quickly and in good condition! Would highly recommend this book to anyone to wants to expand their knowledge of the universe and how many questions baffle us.

⭐I had high hopes for this book, but I feel like the author has let me down.My principal complaint with the book is akin to the complaint about the three statisticians who go hunting- one shoots high, the other shoots low, and the third yells “we got it!” Mazur looks at the world through a mathematicians eyes, and misses the forest for the trees. He is attempting to summarize his thoughts on the physical ramifications for the philosophy and math behind Zeno’s paradox, completely ignoring the fact that one can pit Achilles and the tortoise in a race and observe Achilles’ win. Were he to attempt to focus on this goal, even if he had to do so ironically by halves, he would have a better chance of leaving solid concepts in the reader’s mind. Rather, he fills the reader with a hocus-pocus level of wonder, marveling at the impossibility of motion and it all. One can open their eyes, and, like a child, exclaim, “yet it moves!”, and not be mystified at all. Is Mazur trying to make the reader feel inferior?For example, he spends a certain amount of time at the end of the book marveling at the persistance of vision, wondering if our eyesight averages discrete images into a false perception of continuous motion, what if our vision were that of a strobe camera and the universe were continuous, would our vision be different? This is interesting, and the sense of wonder seems genuine; but there is a physical explanation for the persistance of vision, in that eyesight is a chemical phenomemon and as the chemical reactions become saturated, there is a natural decay required before a new image might render fully. Indeed, he completely ignores wondering about two images (such as the bird and the cage) when flipped at high speed, seem to merge into one bird in a cage. He is restricted into a highly constructed narrative, saying, “follow me along this path”, to his conclusion, ignoring that the educated reader is constatly going to say “but… what about..”, and be left either lost and frustrated, or dumbly following as if in a boring guided tour. Either way, the reader will not feel better about themselves at the end of the tour.More troublingly, there are extensive unmentioned mathmatical insights that he completely overlooks, when as a mathematician, he should be at least mentioning them. For example, Hilbert’s Grand Hotel paradox seems worth at least a brief mention as belonging in the same class, and yet despite three references to David Hilbert in the index, no hint is given. If Zeno’s paradoxes are the root puzzle, as the cover suggests, of “all the mysteries of time and space”- then why does he not spend more time giving concrete examples of how that is? Clearly, Zeno’s paradox seems to be at the root of calculus, which is extremely relevant for mathematics, but he fails to convey sufficiently how and what that means for real world problems. That there is and has always been a deep divide between pure applied math, and practically applied science, is glossed over. If he is saying, “math is the root of all science”, he does not bravely say so. Many people can do science without math, and as such the physical scientist in me is unimpressed with his tack.More minor peccadilloes: This book was not carefully edited, and the hardcover edition contains many typos, sometimes distractingly so. It is also useless as a reference book. The style and subject matter does not leave the reader more educated- rather it is written in a mystical style which doesn’t clearly open or close its subjects, and smacks of a Whig history of Zeno’s paradox. When you separate out his whiggish narration, you quickly begin to realize that this book isn’t really saying anything. He leaves you not much more significantly educated than many putative purchasers of this book, and as such, you’d be better off saving the money. If it’s not educating, it should be entertaining, but he fails on this as well. It does not have well drawn characters, and except for the first few pages, we get no sense of struggle or personality. In fact, reading the first few pages as an excerpt clearly leaves you feeling like it’s going to be a more interesting book- for example, how has Zeno’s paradox been a personal struggle for the author? But instead, it falls flat. It is a dry retelling of history, and I feel cheated by having wasted my time reading it.

⭐This is a pretty fun book, but I have to be a little critical of its construction. Sometimes, I feel authors have a project in mind but never really sew it together the way it should, with an overarching, clearly thought-out, vision for what it is that they want to persuade the reader to think. In that way, it is a kind of inexhaustive treatment of a subject, and it lacks any particular new argumentative thread. For anyone who is already familiar with Plato’s Parmenides, Barbour’s “The End of Time,” or anything like that, this book’s stock will drop precipitously for that reader. I truly believe that it is more valuable (and interesting!) to look at Nick Huggett’s “Space: From Zeno to Einstein.”On the point of lacking an overarching theme, I am troubled, because the book is otherwise on the verge of being a really good book. I think the ideas are well explicated. Being a mathematician, some of Mazur’s understandings of the history and philosophy are just a little bit off, but not so much that I can impugn him. On this point, I think he should have provided citations for a number of his assertions. I liked that the author was willing to go into some modest technical detail in explaining the issues and their solutions. Illustrations were also rather brilliantly placed next to text that would find efficacy in their representations. The book was well enough written and it was, in its piecemeal fashion, interesting. More or less, I recommend this as a very gentle and somewhat comprehensive (for the beginner) starting point into issue regarding the paradox of motion.Another disappointing feature of this book was its lack of treatment given to Zeno’s paradox of the arrow. I think this paradox has generally been treated fairly incompetently within historical and philosophical literature, so I am not holding Mazur to a particularly high standard, in terms of the quality of treatment. However, I do personally believe that this paradox is the one that has not been resolved, and I see it, as a number of philosophers, as deserving quite a bit of treatment.Based on all of the above, I think this is a wonderful book for neophytes completely inexperienced in this topic, but not for the (even most moderately) knowledgeable individuals. It is intelligently written, so, if an intellectual were thinking of picking it up, I would not discourage it, either.

⭐[See my review of ‘The Science Magpie’ for explanation.]A brilliant explanation of all you never knew you wanted to know aboutthis paradox. From Zeno to Aristotle. This is scientific explanationat its finest.

⭐I wanted the author to go more further to the subject.But anyway, interesting book.

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