The Ways of Paradox
Instructor: Bob Tredwell
Mondays • 6 classes – 9/20-11/1 (no class 10/11) • 3:15-5:15 PM
Class size 5-50 students
44 seats remaining
Location: Klahr Center
Please note: The First 5 classes are offered on Zoom only. The 6th class on 11/1/21 will be both in-person and on Zoom at 103 Klahr Center.
Paradoxes range from the silly (Frederick apprenticed to the pirates till he is 84) to the puzzling (Zeno’s proof that motion is impossible) to the profound (Arrow’s proof that no preferential voting scheme can be entirely satisfactory). Silly is good, and profound is better; so we’ll look at some of each. How do paradoxes arise? What can be done about them? And what can we learn from them.Classes
WEEKLY COURSE OUTLINE:
INTRODUCTION
What is logic all about?
What do contradictions show?
If a mirror reverses a license plate left-to-right, why doesn’t it reverse the plate up-to-down?
Infinity. What is all this stuff?
And whether Zeno should have pursued a career as a traffic cop.
How can you define your way into a paradox?
Russell’s Paradox and history’s saddest footnote. What Godel showed, and how.
Probability, and how to win at “Let’s Make a Deal.”
“Big Julie’s Dice:” he erased the spots, but he remembers where they were.
Voting systems
What’s right about Maine’s system of preferential voting, and why no voting system gets it all right.
Wind-up, and some paradoxes in art:
Escher, Dali, and Magritte
Robert (Bob) Tredwell‘s mother felt he had never held an honest job. He was, in more or less this order, a steelworker, a gold miner, a philosophy professor, head of Maine’s Emergency Medical Services program, a consultant to the Saudi Red Crescent Society, and an IT worker at Blue Hill Hospital. His interest in paradox was fostered by his first academic job of teaching logic to young women. He and his wife live in Orono and celebrate their wedding anniversary, occasionally, on February 29.