Ship of Theseus
thought experiment concerning the continuity of identity of an item which has all its parts replaced
The Ship of Theseus is a term referring to a thought experiment, also known as the Theseus paradox, which confronts ideas of identity and change by raising the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object.
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Quotes
edit- The idea of the building, the intention of it, its design, are all immutable and are the essence of the building. The intention of the original builders is what survives. The wood of which the design is constructed decays and is replaced when necessary. To be overly concerned with the original materials, which are merely sentimental souvenirs of the past, is to fail to see the living building itself.
- Douglas Adams, in Last Chance to See (1989)
- Look into your own religion. There's constant reference to relativity. Your ancients, they were masters of understanding that there is no one ultimate rule book for all situations. The woman churning curd into butter, she has to pull one end of the rope, and let the other end go otherwise the rope will break. Contradictions and polarities are two ends of the same rope. You can pull one end and let the other end go.
- Anand Gandhi, Sameep Gandhi, and Khushboo Ranka, in Ship of Theseus (2013)
- The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places, in so much that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.
- Plutarch, in Theseus, as translated by John Dryden
