Background

Continuity versus Discontinuity

Throughout history we have understood that objects in motion glide smoothly through space; that at each displacement a point in space must correspond to an instant in time. Abstract mathematics and the space-time continuum have convinced us that moving objects can traverse an infinity of points in an eternity of instants.

However, there are serious problems with our assumption of continuous motion. These problems, or paradoxes, have been well documented for centuries.

Two thousand years ago the philosopher, Zeno of Elea, questioned why things move when logically, they should not. His paradoxes and other subsequent problems, such as the results of the Michelson-Morley Experiment and the Lorentz-Fitzgerald Contraction, defy logic to this day, not because things move, but because we believe things move continuously.

But in his book, "A Shorter History of Science," William Cecil Dampier wrote,

" A primitive atomic theory was formulated or borrowed from the Greeks, and, a century or so before Christ, the idea of discontinuity was extended to time. Everything exists but for a moment, and in the next moment is replaced by a facsimile; a body is but a series of instantaneous existences--time is atomic."

Their theory was never generally accepted because the duration of moment of existence had never been defined. Wilfrid Boisvert, in his discovery of the discontinuity of motion, identifies that moment and provides evidence to their claim that time is atomic.

The following web pages demonstrate how motion is discontinuous––that it is discontinuity, and not continuity, that is by nature perceivable and provable.

Boisvert's experiments attempt to show that Space, is not a thing but a distance between things, and only as distance can it be measured, and measured only in terms of shorter perceivable distances. Space is then discontinuous.

They show that time is not a thing either, but a duration of immobility between motions of things, a duration that can only be measured in terms of perceivable durations. Time, therefore, is also discontinuous.