rogerzilla
Legendary Member
Papyrus should have been the famous one, though, not Flying Scotsman. It was the fastest, and also a proper A3 from new.
*warning* pub philosophy incoming
If the ancient Greeks had had bikes, Heraclitus, Plutarch and Plato would be discussing the Bike of Theseus, not the Ship of Theseus.
Forget Einstein's riding-on-a-ray-of-light thought experiments, The Ship of Theseus thought experiment is the one that bakes my noodle
I *think* I come down on the side of the 'spatiotemporal theory', where gradual changes to a Thing don't prevent the thing still being the Thing... You can quickly get into ideas like 'the essence of that bike is still there' (but then Hobbes chucks a spanner in the works by asking 'what happens if someone gathers up all the discarded parts and makes a new Thing? Which thing is now The Thing?') They are, after all, just a collection of replaceable, inanimate parts, aren't they?
You can apply this to everything from brooms, classic cars and locomotives to 1960s bands and rock family trees, but I tend to apply it to vintage bikes. On the basis that lots of my bikes are older than me and will comfortably outlast me, I think any incremental changes I make to them (repainting, swapping out groupsets etc) are fair game, as their purpose is to be ridden. Similarly, if a like-for-like tube had to be replaced, then the bike is still the bike. However, they're 'only original once' so the 'mereological' tendency is to hold off from making any changes as long as possible!
Fascinating stuff, Special. The above statement had me stumped for a brief moment, but luckily Wiki quickly enlightened me:However, they're 'only original once' so the 'mereological' tendency is to hold off from making any changes as long as possible!
More pub philosophy, please!A mereological "system" is a first-order theory (with identity) whose universe of discourse consists of wholes and their respective parts, collectively called objects. Mereology is a collection of nested and non-nested axiomatic systems, not unlike the case with modal logic.