Six Famous Thought Experiments, Animated in 60 Seconds Each
by Maria PopovaFrom Ancient Greece to quantum mechanics, or what a Chinese room and a cat have to do with infinity.
From the fine folks at the Open University comes 60-Second Adventures in Thought, a fascinating and delightfully animated series exploring six famous thought experiments.
The Paradox of the Tortoise and Achilles comes from Ancient Greece and explores motion as an illusion:
The Grandfather Paradox grapples with time travel:
Chinese Room comes from the work of John Searle, originally published in 1980, and deals with artificial intelligence:
Hilbert’s paradox of the Grand Hotel, proposed by German mathematician David Hilbert, tackles the gargantuan issue of infinity:
The Twin Paradox, first explained by Paul Langevin in 1911, examines special relativity:
Schrödinger’s Cat, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935, is a quantum mechanics mind-bender:
For more such fascination and cognitive calisthenics, you won’t go wrong with Peg Tittle’s What If….Collected Thought Experiments in Philosophy .
via Open Culture
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