Philosophy

An arrow in flight is, at every single instant, standing completely still

Zeno of Elea argued that at any given instant, a flying arrow occupies exactly one position and isn't moving through it — a snapshot of that instant shows a motionless arrow. If time is just a sequence of such static instants, he reasoned, motion is an illusion built out of stillness. Philosophy didn't have the tools to fully answer this until calculus formalised how instantaneous velocity actually works, two thousand years later.

Zeno of Elea, via Aristotle, Physics (Aristotle's account of Zeno's arguments) — c. 5th century BC — public domain

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