The Infinite Tortoise
eBook - ePub

The Infinite Tortoise

The Curious Thought Experiments of History's Great Thinkers

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Infinite Tortoise

The Curious Thought Experiments of History's Great Thinkers

About this book

A clear, concise and fascinating guide to philosophical thought experiments and how they've shaped our understanding of the world. From Plato's Cave to Descartes' Demon, and from Zeno's paradoxes to Hilbert's Hotel, great thinkers have used thought experiments and paradoxes to try and work out complex ideas in the simplest way possible.Perhaps the most famous thought experiment is that of Zeno's Achilles and the tortoise. If both Achilles and the tortoise move at constant speed, why will Achilles never catch up with the tortoise when the tortoise starts ahead of him? Zeno argues that when Achilles reaches the point where the tortoise started the race, the tortoise will have already moved on. And as Achilles runs on to where the tortoise was last, when he reaches that point the tortoise has moved again. Therefore Achilles will never catch up with the tortoise as the distance he must run gets smaller and smaller and each time he has less and less time to run…Starting in Ancient Greece, Joel Levy guides us through the mind-bending world of thought experiments and their role in revealing the complexity of morality, exploring the limitations and the infinite possibilities of the human mind.

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Yes, you can access The Infinite Tortoise by Joel Levy in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophy & History & Theory of Philosophy. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. By the same author
  3. Title page
  4. Copyright page
  5. Dedication page
  6. Contents
  7. Introduction
  8. THE NATURAL WORLD
  9. Zeno’s Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise (c.420 BCE)
  10. Galileo’s Balls (1628)
  11. Newton’s Cannon (1687)
  12. The Watch on the Heath (1802)
  13. Laplace’s Demon (1814)
  14. Darwin’s Imaginary Illustrations (1859)
  15. Maxwell’s Demon (1867)
  16. What Would It Be Like to Chase a Beam of Light? (1895)
  17. A Man Falling From a Roof (1907)
  18. The Grandfather Paradox (post-1915)
  19. The Ontological Paradox (post-1915)
  20. Schrödinger’s Cat (1935)
  21. HOW DOES THE MIND WORK?
  22. Leibniz’s Mill (1718)
  23. The Missing University (1949)
  24. Turing’s Imitation Game (1950)
  25. Beetles in Boxes (1953)
  26. What Is It Like to Be a Bat? (1974)
  27. The Chinese Room (1980)
  28. Mary the Colour Scientist (1982)
  29. Philosophical Zombies (1996)
  30. HOW TO BE GOOD
  31. Buridan’s Ass (c. seventeenth century)
  32. Pascal’s Wager (1662)
  33. Locke’s Locked Room (1690)
  34. The Prisoner’s Dilemma (1950)
  35. The Trolley Problem (1967)
  36. What’s the Fairest Way to Cut a Cake? (1971)
  37. Judith Jarvis Thomson’s Unconscious Violinist (1971)
  38. Lifeboat Earth (1974)
  39. Take My Leg … Please! (1980)
  40. Minority Report (2001)
  41. WHAT CAN WE KNOW?
  42. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (c.380 BCE)
  43. Descartes’ Evil Genius (1641)
  44. Molyneux’s Blind Man Made to See (1688)
  45. The Surprise Examination Paradox (1943–4)
  46. Newcomb’s Paradox (1960)
  47. WHAT MAKES US WHO WE ARE?
  48. The Sorites Paradox (4 BCE)
  49. The Ship of Theseus (1 CE)
  50. Putnam’s Twin Earth (1973)
  51. Robert Nozick’s Experience Machine (1974)
  52. The Teleporter Duplicate Paradox (1984)
  53. Further Reading
  54. Index