Of course, it is possible that we are cleverer than our Greek forefathers, or at least better educated, and what was not obvious to them may be obvious to us. Let us try and see whether the existence of ^/2 is physically obvious.

Since the intermediate value theorem does not seem to be obvious by observation, let us see whether it is obvious by introspection. Instead of observing the flight of an actual physical arrow, let us close our eyes and imagine the flight of an ideal arrow from A to B. Here a difficulty presents itself.

From the time of Zeno to the end of the 19th century, all those who argued about Zeno's paradoxes whether they considered them 'funny little riddles' or deep problems did not doubt that, in fact, the arrow did have a position and velocity and did, indeed, travel along some path from A to B.

A note on Zeno We know practically nothing about Zeno except that he wrote a book containing various paradoxes. The book itself has been lost and we only know the paradoxes in the words of other Greek philosophers who tried to refute them. Plato wrote an account of discussion between Socrates, Zeno and Zeno's teacher Parmenides but it is probably fictional. The most that we can hope for is that, like one of those plays in which Einstein meets Marilyn Monroe, it remains true to what was publicly known.