Buridan's Ass/Traditional

Paradox

An ass standing equidistant between two equal heaps of grain of identical quality will starve to death.

This is supposedly because there is no grounds for preferring one heap to the other.


Also presented as

The paradox of Buridan's ass can be presented in various forms, for example:

an ass equidistant between two buckets of water, and who dies of thirst
the grain can be replaced by hay

and so on.


Sources

  • 1989: Ephraim J. Borowski and Jonathan M. Borwein: Dictionary of Mathematics ... (previous) ... (next): Buridan's ass
  • 2014: Christopher Clapham and James Nicholson: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Mathematics (5th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Buridan's ass
  • 2021: Richard Earl and James Nicholson: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Mathematics (6th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Buridan's ass
This article is issued from ProofWiki. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.