Latent Paradoxes and Contradictions
Does discussing absolute nothingness instantly involve one in paradoxes and contradictions?
posted by Horace Jeffery Hodges @ 3:22 PM
2 comments
Gypsy Scholar
Brainstorming about history, politics, literature, religion, and other topics from a 'gypsy' scholar on a wagon hitched to a star.
Thursday, November 11, 2021
About Me
- Name: Horace Jeffery Hodges
- Location: Seoul, South Korea
I am a retired professor. I last taught at Ewha Womans University, mostly composition, research writing, and cultural issues, but also the occasional graduate seminar on Gnosticism and Johannine theology and the occasional undergraduate course on European history. My doctorate is in history (U.C. Berkeley), with emphasis on religion and science. My thesis is on John's gospel and Gnosticism. I'm also an award-winning writer, and I recommend my novella, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, to anyone interested. I'm originally from the Arkansas Ozarks, but my academic career -- funded through doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships (e.g., Fulbright, Naumann, Lady Davis) -- has taken me through Texas, California, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, and Israel and has landed me in Seoul, South Korea. I've also traveled to Mexico, visited much of Europe, including Moscow, and touched down briefly in a few East Asian countries. Hence: "Gypsy Scholar."
2 Comments:
I recall a passage from a book on the philosophy of religion that set up a Gedankenexperiment about infinity: imagine an infinitely long bookshelf upon which sit black books and red books, alternating black, red, black, red ad infinitum. Now imagine that you remove all the red books such that only black books remain on the shelf. You've just subtracted an infinity of red books from a infinity of both red and black books. So could it be said that infinity minus infinity equals infinity?
The concept of infinity isn't the same as the concepts of existence and nothingness, granted, but it's a limit concept all the same, and it may share the same paradoxical traits as other limit concepts. Things get strange out on the edge.
I think in terms of smaller and larger infinities. Your comment, by the way, reminds me of Hilbert's Infinite Hotel. And there's probably a room with an infinitely large library of books. Indeed, in every room, such a library! Which leads to Borges's Library of Babel. Oh, this is endless!
Jeffery Hodges
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