Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Zeno's paradoxes

Zeno's paradoxes

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Resolved:

inactive

This mediation case is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this case page.

request links: view edit delete watch

Filed: 02:05, November 8 2009 (UTC)

Involved parties

Steaphen (talk · contribs), filing party
Ansgarf (talk · contribs)
JimWae (talk · contribs)

Filing party: you must serve all of these editors with notifications. See here for instructions.

Articles involved

Zeno's_paradoxes (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Other steps in dispute resolution that have been attempted

Example link 1. Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2009-08-09/
Example link 2. Talk:Zeno's_paradoxes
Example link 3. Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2006-12-28_Zeno's_Paradoxes_and_Geomeric_series
Example link 4. User:JaimeLesMaths/Zeno's_Paradoxes_mediation

Filing party: Please ensure you have fully read this guide before filing.

Issues to be mediated

The party filing this request uses this section to list the issues for mediation. Other parties can list additional issues in the section below.

Issue 1. Statements inferring or directly stating that infinite-series solutions are able to explain, or solve Zeno's Paradoxes. We now know that such methods cannot do so, and yet the main article still includes suggestions that this is relevant to the solution of the paradoxes.

Issue 2. Continued intransigence of parties who suggest theories or statements that have no basis in fact.

Issue 3. The failure to observe scientific and journalistic standards, and Wikipedian policies. For example, one of the main issues is the statement that "Using ordinary mathematics we can arrive at a specific time when and place where Achilles would be able to catch up to the tortoise." In the previous informal mediation, a request was made for reliable sources in support of this statement. None were provided, yet the statement remains on the main page. This is a clear and unambiguous breach of Wikipedia policy. As the initiator of this mediation, I provided reliable sources in support of my statements that provided a more accurate description of the subject. None were provided to support the arguments of those who assert that "Using ordinary mathematics we can arrive at a specific time when and place where Achilles would be able to catch up to the tortoise."

Issue 4. Provision of a Reliable Source stating that using infinite-series, or any geometric expression, we may fully, precisely and correctly define and describe the movement of bodies (of any size, be they atomic, molecular, organic, or large-bodies). This Reliable Source would then need to explain how such an expression supersedes the Uncertainty Principle of quantum mechanics which denies the possibility of doing so.

Issue 5. The need for setting clear guidelines that disallow statements concerning the motion of physical objects (e.g. Zeno's runner, arrow or tortoise) that cannot be correlated with observable experimental evidence. That is, the setting of guidelines which disallow speculative ideas (e.g. application of infinite-series to 'solve' Zeno's Paradoxes), irrespective of however many respondents might wish were true.

Issue 6. Correction to the misunderstandings of quantum mechanics, by which the respondent then attempts to reassert the applicability of infinite-series/geometric expression as being valid or relevant to solving Zeno's Paradoxes. In particular JimWae's misunderstanding that the Uncertainty Principle limits measurement (of the movement of physical things) due to technological or physical limitations. There are Reliable Sources who affirm that Uncertainty (or more correctly, possibility) is embedded in nature to such an extent that the underlying ground, or true nature will not be fully revealed by any mathematical expression, or physical experimentation. Thus, any definitive mathematical or geometric expression, when applied to the subject of Zeno's Paradoxes is invalid, and needs to be clarified as such on the main page. Unless a Reliable Source can state otherwise.

Issue 7. Clear guidelines for those contributors who rely on conjecture in support of their statements, as exemplified by Ansgarf and others who "hope to expect a mechanical world down there" (below Planck distances and times). An encyclopaedia is no place for hoping "to expect", and certainly no place for then offering theoretical solutions based on said hopes and expectations. Reliable Sources can be provided who assert that there is simply no fully identifiable, measurable, mechanical world "down there" as any such identification and measurement violates the Uncertainty Principle of quantum mechanics.Steaphen (talk) 23:40, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Additional issues to be mediated

Other parties can use this section to list any others issues they wish to include in the mediation. Please do not modify or remove any other party's listing. Please sign all additions to this section if there are more than two parties involved in this case.

Additional issue 1. The offering of ideas, suggestions or theories relating to Zeno's Paradoxes that are not able to be verified in fact. Particularly, the continued practice of citing infinite-series/arithmetic/mathematical solutions while knowing that such treatments fail at increments in movement that are well covered and confirmed by quantum theory and experiment.

Additional issue 2. The continued refusal to accept that nobody cites infinite-series solution as solution for the case that space and time are not dense, i.e. if time and space increase in minimal non-zero increments.Ansgarf (talk) 04:10, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Additional Issue 3. Mathematical correctness of infinite-series solutions in a dense time/space model, even though this might not apply to a particular physical problem.Ansgarf (talk) 04:10, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Additional Issue 4. Acknowledge the fact that if time and space increases in minimal non-zero increments, Zeno would be unable to construct an infinite series of distances between Achilles and tortoise, or Homer and the bus. Ansgarf (talk) 04:10, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Additional Issue 5. Suitability of mathematical theories that involve infinite-series solutions, such as differential equations, integrals, and limits, to describe physical phenomena.Ansgarf (talk) 04:10, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Additional Issue 6. The question whether Zeno's paradox is a thought experiment, aiming to show that the observation of physical motion is an illusion. Ansgarf (talk) 04:10, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Additional Issue 7. Recognition that mathematical calculations are part of the history of the paradoxes, and so are relevant to the article. There is no need to bring quantum mechanics in as the primary source of uncertainty in whatever calculation comes from mathematics. All calculations involving measurements are limited by the precision of the measurements they start with. --JimWae (talk) 10:29, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Additional Issue 8. Recognition that Quantum theory is silent on whether space and time are in fact discrete. Most physicists do not maintain that objects really "jump" through space and time - even if they sometimes find that model useful. QM places theoretical limitations on how small a space or time can be measured or physically distinguished, not on how small a space and time there can be. QM does not stop us from wondering what happens between Planck units, even though that question cannot be answered by science.--JimWae (talk) 10:29, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Additional Issue 9. Recognition that the article does not currently state that the paradoxes are resolved, nor should it. It does state that the mathematical issues are resolved (at least as far as nearly all mathematicians are concerned). The article presently notes that philosophers remark that finding the sum is not the same as completing the run. --JimWae (talk) 09:46, 8 November 2009 (UTC)--JimWae (talk) 10:29, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Additional Issue 10. Recognition that the talk page is not a place to carry on endless musings about "scientific proofs" one has made regarding the paradoxes, nor to repeatedly request that people would be enlightened if they would but read one's "take" on some other site--JimWae (talk) 09:54, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Additional Issue 11. Initiator seems to maintain that QM defeats the mathematical approach, and so preserves the paradoxes. But initiator's version of QM (that space "really is" discrete) itself defeats the paradoxes, for then there is no infinite series to complete. I have seen no reliable source for this position. The paradoxes are not about finding the precise point in space and time at which Achilles completes the task (nor do we need QM to remark there are limits to how precise we can be about that). They ZPs are about, given the model of space and time in which between any two points there is still another point, whether the task can be completed at all.--JimWae (talk) 10:27, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Parties' agreement to mediate

All parties should sign below, indicating that they agree to mediate the issue. If any party fails to sign within seven days, or if a party indicates they do not agree, then the mediation will be rejected. Only "Agree" or "Disagree" and signatures should appear here; any comments will be removed, but can be made at the talk page.

Agree. Steaphen (talk) 02:05, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Agree.Ansgarf (talk) 02:23, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. --JimWae (talk) 09:54, 8 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Decision of the Mediation Committee

A member of the Mediation Committee will indicate acceptance/rejection/other relevant notes in this section. Non-Committee members should not edit this section; all comments should go on the talk page, unless a party is specifically requested to reply here by a Committee member.

Accept.

For the Mediation Committee, Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 23:20, 25 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.