Instants

Paradox is based upon assumptions. That is my conclusion. It may have been more famously concluded by someone famous for it, but I don't know that, so for today, for me, it is mine. Zeno supplied us with a bunch of paradoxes. He puzzled people with his arguments absurdio, and frustrated them, too, I am certain. Calculus solves some of them, I read yesterday in the New York Times, and the idea of infinity helps to refute them too, thanks to Archimedes. Has something to do with the riddle of pi. Quantum mechanics may have a hand as well.

But Saint Thomas Aquinas answered Zeno with other assumptions that are fun. "Instants are not parts of time," he says, "for time is not made up of instants any more than a magnitude is made of points. . . . Hence, it does not follow that a thing is not in motion in a given time, just because it is not in motion in any instant of time."

I can't testify to the validity or non-validity of the statement, but I like the assumption that instances are not parts of time. I like that a lot. Instants are bracketed, stand alone entities, and if they are sacred, according to Eliade, they may be re-entered and re-lived. Eliade holds this to be true for religious time, but I think the case may be made for secularly transcendent time as well. Depending upon your assumptions, of course.

Zeno was taught by another provocative character, Diogenes, famous for going about the city naked while holding a lamp "looking for an honest man." What fun he must have had. It is reported that he slept in a tub and masturbated in public. More professors should do that.

But Diogenes had his assumptions, too, and neither he nor Zeno would have done well in the Age of Theory, I think. Call Stanley Fish. He can take anything apart.

I used to laugh at Warren Beatty's sister, Shirley MacCLaine, and her New Age philosophy that everyone lived in his or her own reality. I dated a beautiful girl for awhile who believed that as well. In moments of conflict she would say, "Well, you be you and I'll be me, and that's beautiful." It drove me crazy.

MacClaine was ahead of her time, I think now, or mine, at least. And the beautiful girl? Time caught up with her and me both. But man, there were instances. . . .