Act 2. Is not true of itself.
Another noble soul, tormented by mysteries, gifted us another paradox, another portal. Lord Bertrand Russell stumped upon a devastating paradox while twirling in the narrow corridors of the so-called Set Theory.
A tricky exercise for the mind to comprehend this abstract edifice. Luckily, there is one brilliant individual, Mister Jeffrey Kaplan who recorded a video explaining this theory with wit, character and humanness. I assure you that watching this video is a genuine pleasure.
In this new act of our play, the axiom – the giant Turtle that carries on its carapace the tremendous and literally mind blowing edifice – is elegantly simple: anything can be put into a set… (If you have noticed, a good axiom is always simple).
From this little sentence arises an intricate edifice that is called the Set theory. Just like with Lobachevsky geometry, Set theory is not a made-up abstraction but something we discover. Something we unveil, something that exists and is governed by a mysterious order. But this time indeed it feels we’re getting close to the ultimate giant Turtle that stands on nothingness.
Somehow, set theory happens to be at the foundation of…. everything. Computer science, quantum mechanics, linguistics. Probably it’s not an exaggeration to say that it lies at the heart of all reality. How come? Let’s see for ourselves.