Zeno's Paradox - Kirsten Nicholls

1) In Zeno’s Paradox, Mary Anne Doanne starts out with a breakdown of the term real time. Though her discussion of the term was somewhat long-winded, this term comes to represent the backbone of Doanne’s argument that the altering of time is something that takes place in real life, not on the big screen. Time, as she states, is one that is expressed “off-screen, between frames, in darkness”, and not through the collective stills of the film reel.
2) One of the first main points that Doanne states in her argument is that Zeno was the “perfect nemesis” for Bergson due to his philosophical beliefs as a member of the Eleatic School. In this she states that Zeno’s beliefs made him “fully invested in the denial of movement, change, and plurality.” Zeno’s famous argument is one that Bergson himself sites as a falsehood of philosophical thought. In this example, Zeno states that an arrow can never travel from point A to point B because the distance that it is traveling can be divided again and again an infinite number of times until all you are left with is an arrow that at any moment in time is at rest. And since the arrow is at rest, it cannot be in a state of motion, hence it can never reach its final destination.
3) Bergson argues that true movement cannot be divided into different snap-shots of time, as such is the case with cinematography. It cannot be divided for motion is a continuous whole and as such must be studied and understood in its entirety. In this Bergson argues that when creating the illusion of movement that movement has to exist somewhere. When we see movement through the lens of the camera, what we are actually seeing is the illusion of movement. In this Bergson means that to create the illusion of motion you must first have something that is motionless. For example, when a horse is in full gallop, what we actually seeing is the rapid transition of the background as the horse passes it by and the full stride of the horse’s body emphasizing an object in motion. When you breakdown this image an infinite number of times you find an object (i.e. the horse) that is motionless for that one-single moment. Such is the way in which the illusion of motion is accomplished in cinematography, or as Bergson saw it, “cinematograph can only produce the illusion of mobility”, not the actual effect.
4) Overall, I do agree with Doanne’s argument in that Zeno’s theory (though attempting to break new ground in philosophical thought) is at best flawed. For how can one try and disprove motion while at the same time recognizing its existence in their argument. And if mobility is in fact immobility than what does that say about life and existence as a whole. How can you exist when nothing is in motion, and when there can be no cause and no effect. How can you have this very argument if there is no existence to begin with. However as Doanne highlights in Bergson’s arguments, when it comes to cinematography and the illusion of movement, you can stop and start motion at any given point, but it can only be true motion if real time is used. Because without this acceptance of time and space and how bodies move through it, how can such an illusion of movement be right.