Ship of Theseus
“The Ship of Theseus Paradox” a.k.a “Grandfather’s Axe paradox” has been around from about the late 1st century. The Paradox goes like this. Suppose you have a ship made of 100 pieces of wood. After certain interval of time an old piece is replaced by a new piece of wood. The ship is still the same ship. Now after a succession of these intervals, our ship’s old wood pieces have been completely replaced by new pieces of wood. Now the question arises if we form a ship with all the old pieces of wood, which one would be our original ship?
Last year I was introduced to a film directed by Anand Gandhi named ‘Ship of Theseus’. The storyline plays around the concept of Organ Donation. And have been thinking about it a lot! It keeps tickling my mind.