The Zeno-Socrates dialogs Chapter 10

Zeno's paradoxes as the predecessor of all hologram theory: The Zeno-Socrates dialogs:

The Zeno-Socrates dialogs

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Chapter 10

By Exia, a servant in Zeno's house and future grandmother to Eudoxus of Cnidus.

Zeno was contemplating which form of death he would chose for himself and the one likely to be chosen by the strange menu and the pile of bones attesting to its seriousness.  Parminides was apparently applying the same logic to someone else to some of their supporters who had joined them in their togas, “I wonder which of these deaths would most suit Socrates?”

Before they could carry this discussion further they heard a voice calling their names and turned to see Socrates running up clutching a crumpled scroll.  “What fresh torture is our benefactor bringing us now?” Parminides asked no one in particular.

“I have got it!” Socrates announced, “The answer to our problem.”

“You have proof we did not violate the laws of Athens? A pardon?”

“Well, no.  I managed to find a copy of what was published, however.”

Zeno took the paper from Socrates and started to scan over it.  He mumbled to himself, “What is this about Achilles?  I never challenged the heroes of Greece!”

“Well, I embellished some of the ideas.”

“Embellished, you mean rewrote!”

“They are so much more real this way!” Socrates complained.  “This way they mean something to the common man.”

“This way they will stir the mob to tear us to pieces,” Parminides suggested.  “I only tried to show that motion is an illusion!  And what is this one?” he said looking over Zeno’s shoulder, “There is only one thing but because it is separated there must be many.  That is mine, but this was only to show that if dimension doesn’t exist, as it should not if motion is an illusion, than one thing can be everything.”

“This one,” Zeno volunteered, appears to be correctly put.  That everything has but two parts, a front and a back and they must extend infinitely or not at all.  But in truth, this was merely to show that if things exist in one point in time and then in another which follows, it must extend infinitely in size or at least from the beginning to the end of time. And if you were to take the time away it would cease to exist, at least in our time.  It is confusing without the discussion of time, it is a paradox, instead of an explanation!”

“And then we have ‘divisibility.’”, Parminides said moving down to the next.  “This is made unduly complicated, we merely pointed out that things can be in discrete parts, quantum parts, whether time, matter, fire or water and that at some point the division must result in our not having them in our universe at all.”

“Please sirs,” said one of their supporters, “that strikes of heresy.   If you are saying that by slicing an apple enough times it leaves the universe, then where does it go, pray tell?”

“The one with Achillies,” Zeno said getting back to his original, “is aligned with another where you never reach an end by only going half way at each step.  These are but different ways of saying the same thing, yet Socrates has made it sound like we are questioning two different divinities.”

“And this of the arrow fired by Hercules?  Saying that time is made of moments, that in any moment everything is still, is merely another way of saying that time is quantum time, which of course has nothing to do with how it is reflected here.”

“It is contrary to what is experienced, sirs.  Things must not work in that way, for A fast man may overtake a tortoise.  You are tempting Draco to kill you by firing arrows with the argument that they being motionless will never kill you!”

“That is not at all what we meant!  The idea is that the reality we experience is real, but that it is somehow a reflection of something else.  It is like a painting of a pond.  The pond exists in the picture, but it is not really a pond, only the drawing of one.”

“Socrates, you have taken philosophy and turned it into parable.  It is no wonder we are accused of heresy!  Why even to me it sounds hysterical!”  

The wonderful thing about my quantum time theory is not that it fits so well into prior religious doctrine, or even that it allows a novel approach to ancient paradoxes.  The wonderful thing is that it allows a mechanism to get far enough out of our universe so that we can begin to look at what lies behind it.  We can pull back the curtain a little more.  IT is not meant to supplant the gods only to allow us to consider them intelligently.”

“Perhaps I took too much license, but you must admit it makes for rather fetching reading.”

“I need time to think on this,” Zeno said holding the paper as far from his eyes as his arms would allow.

“Time,” said one of the armed guards indicating the open doors of the Court house, “you do not have, unless it hides in your paradox.”