Рет қаралды 1,895
In the 19th century, a serious debate was going on between mathematicians and philosophers about the foundations of mathematics. The main topic of discussion was whether mathematics was a science like physics and chemistry. Where does mathematics get its feature of being precise knowledge? A group of mathematicians argued that the basis of mathematics was logic. Just like logic, mathematics derived its certainty from its reliance on definitions. One of the biggest advocates of this idea was the German mathematician Gottlob Frege. Frege was about to complete his life's project to show that mathematics was fundamentally identical with logic. The second volume of his book, Fundamentals of Arithmetic, which he wrote to show that the foundation of mathematics is based on logic, was published. Meanwhile, Frege received a letter from the British mathematician Bertrand Russell. In the letter, Russell said that one of Frege's basic axioms, which he used to prove that mathematics and logic are fundamentally identical, was wrong. To demonstrate this fallacy, Russell used the reasoning we now know as the Barber's Paradox. We can briefly put the paradox as follows: We have a barber who shaves only those who do not shave themselves. This barber never shaves those who shave him. So can our barber shave himself according to this rule? If we say it can, it would not be following the rule; Because he shaves himself, he should not shave those who shave themselves. If we say it can't be done, we still don't follow the rule; because he must shave those who do not shave themselves. Barber's Paradox or Russell's Paradox deeply shook the acceptance of the concept of sets in mathematics. It had a major impact on the prevailing ideas about the foundations of mathematics in the 20th century. It influenced the thoughts of many philosophers such as Wittgenstein. In this video, I would like to draw attention to a different aspect that this paradox shows us. In my opinion, this paradox can help us get rid of the prejudice that we cannot understand scientific and theoretical ideas that seem difficult to us. As we approach major scientific theories on a universal scale, such as general relativity theory and quantum mechanics, we are sometimes haunted by the thought that "we cannot understand them." Russell's Paradox tells us that this bias is unfounded. We can certainly understand the ideas developed by others. No matter how complex these thoughts seem, we must keep in mind that they are often not beyond our scope of understanding. Is this what a paradox tells us? Here's to the video...