Re: TOTALLY TRIVIAL ASIDE: Lewis Carroll

Darin Sunley (rsunley@escape.ca)
Tue, 23 Nov 1999 12:04:22 -0600

I always had the impression that Newton resolved Zeno's paradox through the invention of calculus by inventing the mathematical tools to perform operations on infinite series and, more importantly, to work out how to sum an infinite series through the use of integration.

Now, since Bertrand Russell, George Boole, Godel, Cantor, et al. went to all that effort of translating symboligic logic into number theory, couldn't we simply integrate over an infinite series of modus ponens to actually arrive at a useful proposition?

If I've messed up the details on this, please let me know. GEB (which, incidentally, contains the aforementioned essay) is pretty much the only source I'm going on here.

Darin Sunley
rsunley@escape.ca

Brian Manning Delaney wrote:

> This delightful (very brief) piece by Lewis Carroll has inspired many to try to
> fathom the mysteries of philosophy (and others to become vulgar
> Wittgensteinians):
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~lfdean/carroll/essays/achilles.html
>
> Best,
> Brian.