Abstract

Failure to understand continuity leads to a denial of movement's existence, as exemplified in the the paradoxes of Zeno and in their consideration by Lord Bertrand Russell. Each recognizes the presence in the notion of continuity of unity and multitude. Each denies this impossible, but Zeno insists upon a Parmenidean unity, while Russell resolves all to unrelated indivisibles. No solution is available in Newtonian physics. The concept of inertia possesses an indifference that allows no order to the moments of movement, and therefore no means of uniting the movement to the moment and the movement from the moment in a whole prior to both. Ancillary mathematical and metaphysical considerations on Newton's part support the understanding of movement as the occupation of an infinite series of places. The understanding of potency in Aristotle allows for such occupations to be conceived not as actual arrivals and departures but the possibility of such, together with an order to the term of movement. An order therefore arises among the moments of motion and the understanding of a moment as the end of one motion and the beginning of another in such a way as to unite the parts of a movement rather than divide them