The History and Mystery
of Paradoxes
We’ve all watched The Dark Knight
movie and also know the famous statement given by The Joker in it. “What
happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?” Ever wondered
what might be the answer to that seemingly easy question? You may not find an answer,
because that is a paradox. A paradox is a statement which has one part of it
contradicting the other part. Since the question nullifies itself, we may not
have a direction to find an answer to it. It seems to be true for one minute,
the next moment you’ll have a point against it. It is always confusing
fidgeting with paradoxes. Yet, they are very interesting.
It was a very old tradition for
people to follow paradoxes and bang their heads against the wall to answer any
paradox with a proper reasoning. So here, I will mention a few of my favourite
paradoxes and discuss a little about it how I streamlined my thoughts about it.
Discussion: We all know the story of Pinocchio. His nose grows in size
whenever he lies about anything. Now, if he says his nose his growing,
according to the above statement, he is lying. Which means the opposite of the
statement made should happen, which means the nose shouldn’t grow. But the
statement says “My nose will be growing”. So, the statement says one thing and
the property of the subject is contradicting this statement. This makes it a
paradox.
2.
The Sentence Paradox: “The next
statement is true. The before statement is false.”
Discussion: Woah! Pretty confusing scenario. See the first sentence. It
says the next one is true. But the
next statement says the first one is false. Which means the first statement is
wrong and this means the second statement is not true. So, the first part of
the statement is contradicting itself and so is the second part. I know you are
totally confused. That’s why it is a paradox.
3. The
Barber’s Paradox: “A barber (who
is a man) shaves all and only those men who do not shave themselves. Does he
shave himself?”
Discussion: This is yet another interesting paradox and one of my
favourites. In this frame of reference, it means there is only one barber in
the village. He shaves “all” those people of the village who don’t shave
themselves and he is a member of the village. Then who will shave him? One
perplexing one that managed to grab my attention from the very time I got to
know about paradoxes.
4.
Socratic Paradox: “I know that I
know nothing at all”
Discussion: No much description needed! The simplest of words used to
create one of the most confusing lines. If I know nothing, how do I know that I
know nothing? Perplexed, I left this to think about it in detail in the future.
5.
Unstoppable force vs. Immovable object: “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?”
Discussion: We are back with The Joker’s paradox. An unstoppable force?
Something that doesn’t find resistance anywhere and hence exists all the time
and is capable of pushing anything infinitely. An immovable object doesn’t
actually exist in terms of science. Any particle or object, when it is viewed,
its frame of reference should also be considered. For instance, let’s consider
our planet. When we are on the planet, we obviously feel it is a stationary
object. This is from our frame of reference. But if you see the same planet
from sun, we see it moving. Therefore, immovable object is quite a confusing
thing and bringing the two together to see the result is furthermore
unimaginable. Therefore it is a paradox.
There are so many categories of paradoxes, like Philosophical
paradoxes, Mathematical paradoxes, Physics paradoxes, General Paradoxes, Time
paradoxes, etc. Nevertheless, it creates interest in anyone to think as this
mind is hungry for thoughts. So, just sit back and relax. Enjoy the wonder of
nature as it has formed such unbreakable structures which were pre-existing
even before the consciousness of man.
#Knowing #9D
You may also check out:
No comments