Editing Hui Shi (section)

===Miscellaneous Paradoxes===

Another passage from the {{Transliteration|zh|Tian Xia}} attributes 21 more paradoxes to Hui Shi and other members of the School of Names, which they are said to have used in their debates. Compared to the Ten Theses listed above, they appear even more absurd and unsolvable:

{{Blockquote|quote=<poem>{{nbsp|5}}{{lang|zh|	惠施以此為大觀於天下而曉辯者，天下之辯者相與樂之。卵有毛，雞三足，郢有天下，犬可以為羊，馬有卵，丁子有尾，火不熱，山出口，輪不蹍地，目不見，指不至，至不絕，龜長於蛇，矩不方，規不可以為圓，鑿不圍枘，飛鳥之景未嘗動也，鏃矢之疾而有不行不止之時，狗非犬，黃馬、驪牛三，白狗黑，孤駒未嘗有母，一尺之捶，日取其半，萬世不竭。辯者以此與惠施相應，終身無窮。|  size = 110% }}
{{nbsp|5}}Hui Shi by such sayings as these made himself very conspicuous throughout the kingdom, and was considered an able debater. All other debaters vied with one another and delighted in similar exhibitions. [They would say,] "There are feathers in an egg." "A fowl has three feet." "The kingdom belongs to Ying." "A dog might have been [called] a sheep." "A horse has eggs." "A tadpole has a tail." "Fire is not hot." "A mountain gives forth a voice." "A wheel does not tread on the ground." "The eye does not see." "The finger indicates, but needs not touch [the object]." "Where you come to may not be the end." "The tortoise is longer than the snake." "The carpenter's square is not square." "A compass should not itself be round." "A chisel does not surround its handle." "The shadow of a flying bird does not [itself] move." "Swift as the arrowhead is, there is a time when it is neither flying nor at rest." "A dog is not a hound." "A bay horse and a black ox are three." "A white dog is black." "A motherless colt never had a mother." "If from a stick a foot long you every day take the half of it, in a myriad ages it will not be exhausted." It was in this way that the debaters responded to Hui Shi, all their lifetime, without coming to an end.</poem>|source=''Zhuangzi'', chapter 33 (Legge translation)<ref>{{Cite book |title=Sacred Books of the East |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |year=1891 |editor-last=Müller |editor-first=Max |volume=40 |translator-last=Legge |translator-first=James |chapter=The Writings of Kwang Tse}}</ref>}}

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 | footer = [[Zeno of Elea|Zeno's]] paradox of an endlessly divisible race track resembles Hui Shi's paradox of an endlessly divided stick.
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The last statement in particular, "if from a stick a foot long you every day take the half of it, in a myriad ages it will not be exhausted" is notable for its resemblance to the [[Zeno's paradoxes#Dichotomy paradox|Dichotomy paradox]] described by [[Zeno of Elea]]. Zeno's paradox takes the example of a runner on a finite race track, arguing that, because runner must reach the halfway point before they can reach the finish line, and the length of the track can be divided into halves infinitely many times, it should be impossible for them to reach the finish line in a finite amount of time.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://mathworld.wolfram.com/ZenosParadoxes.html|title=Zeno's Paradoxes|first=Paul|last=Field|website=Wolfram MathWorld|access-date=August 2, 2022}}</ref> [[Mozi (book)|The Mohist canon]] appears to propose a solution to this paradox by arguing that in moving across a measured length, the distance is not covered in successive fractions of the length, but in one stage.

Due to the lack of surviving works, most of the other paradoxes listed are difficult to interpret.<ref>{{Cite web |title=School of Names > Miscellaneous Paradoxes (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/school-names/paradoxes.html |access-date=2020-01-30 |website=plato.stanford.edu}}</ref>