ABSTRACT
Though the arrow cannot move during an instant of time, it does not follow that it cannot be moving at an instant. It’s a matter of what it’s been doing before and after that instant. If you are asked what you were doing at midday on Sunday it makes perfectly good sense to reply that you were mowing the lawn. If Zeno had been right, there could be no such activity as mowing the lawn, since that involves motion. You can’t, of course, have done any mowing during that instant; rather, at that moment, you were in the course of mowing. Thus the flying arrow is in the course of moving at any instant included in a stretch of time during which it is moving. The arrow is moving at an instant, i, if it is in different positions at nearby instants before and after i (or, to put it more accurately, at arbitrarily close positions at arbitrarily close instants). And it is at rest at an instant only if there is an interval of time, containing that instant, during which it does not change its position.
