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“This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has requi
by dmichulke 6y ago
“This, milord, is my family's axe.
We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade.
And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my family?
And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know. Pretty good.”
- T. Pratchett - "The fifth elefant"
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoOr the axe George Washington used to chop down the cherry tree. Had 2 new heads and three new handles, but its the same axe!
- maldini94 6y agoThis reminds me of the Greek paradox "Ship of Theseus" which asks the question if every part of a ship is reconstructed over time is it the same ship? If any subset of the new ship is a subset of the original ship then surely. But this also raises the question if we take a subset and build a new ship. Which is the original? Another interesting take is to introduce non-physical attributes such as a name of the ship. That way every piece of wood could be changed but the name attribute would still make it a subset