PiRaMidas 1972-1984

Staying still can be seen as endless slow speed or endlessly great slowness. "What goes for speed or slowness should equally go for stillness as the highest point of slowness. Equally can equality be considered endlessly minor inequality." (Leibniz, The Principle of Continuity, 1687) "Differences are just inverted similarities," added Novalis. In Paul's epistle to Titus we find that a Cretan, "their own prophet" said: "Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons" (1, 12). Traditionally, this prophet was Epimenides, the namesake of the famous paradox, although its creator could have been the much younger Milesian Eubolides, according to Diogenes Laertes. Theophrastus allegedly wrote three books on this odd claim, while Chrysippus wrote no less than twenty-eight. Aulus Gellius said: "When I lie and say I am lying, am I lying or saying the truth?" Cicero, on the other hand, said: "If you say you are lying and you are telling the truth: are you lying or telling the truth?" The Epimenides paradox was brought to life in 1931, when the Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel formulated a theorem on the principal incompleteness of the mathematical system: an uncontradictory system cannot prove its uncontradictoriness by itself; therefore, it contains indefinite, equally verifiable as well as unverifiable claims. Gödel's paradox reminded the physician Douglas Hofstadter of another classic enigma, Zeno's Achilles, who cannot overtake the tortoise for logical reasons. "Previously, the pursuant needs to reach the point where the pursued took off, therefore the slower always has a certain advantage." Zeno wanted to point out that motion is merely an illusion: Achilles overtakes the tortoise to the viewer, but not to the thinker. The one who closes their eyes and considers the problem knows that there is no motion and that senses simply delude. The eyes cannot reach the reality – just as Achilles cannot reach the tortoise. (Transcribed by Marcel Bačić for Ivan Ladislav Galeta)