The Sorites Parradox is an ancient conundrum that runs as follows;
If you have a pile of sand comprised of a thousand grains of sand and you take 1 grain of sand away at a time at what exact point does the pile or heap of sand cease being consideed a pile or a heap?
While many have proposed solutions, no proposal has been deemed adequate
Northwestern University recently investigated materials like the sand grains to try to determine whether when mixed they behaved more like a liquid or a solid. Solids mix like like cards and liquids mix by folding and stretching.
They found that sand and similar materials mix by by both methods. The persistent effect they found after 500 mixings is that parts of of these mixtures don't mix.
My proposal...a heap or a pile ceases to be described as such when no portion of it is not mixed.
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8 comments
Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.Did any of my tax dollars get spent on this?m Please say no......
AnneWimsey
Level 9
Aug 17, 2018
1
Doesn't a pile only require two objects (or more) to be considered a pile? It's still all perception on a "larger scale" though. Does relativity come into it? Is a single atom the only thing that can be considered a "single" thing and not a pile? Can 1 grain of sand really be considered a single thing when it's made of more than 1 atom?
Piece2YourPuzzle
Level 8
Aug 16, 2018
1
Just use an adjective, that's why we have them. This is a pile of sand. Take away a grain, now it's a smaller pile. Keep taking grains away, the pile gets smaller and smaller. One grain left? A REALLY small pile of sand. Take that one away, no pile, no sand, no anything. Parts of speech are your friends. 
zeuser
Level 9
Aug 16, 2018
2
cava:
Yes, but at some point there are too few grains of sand, wheat or whatever and the pile or heap that you started with is gone.
If a corporation is removing mountaintops in order extract coal, at what point does a mountain cease to be a mountain?
Flyingsaucesir
Level 8
Aug 16, 2018
0
cava:
When it becomes a plateau.
'Pile' and 'heap' are both vague terms. There is no right answer. People can disagree about vague terms. This is not science but just everyday language, which is full of contradictions and paradoxes.
Dietl
Level 7
Aug 16, 2018
1
cava:
Yes this is the purpose of my proposal; to structurally determine differences, kinda functional limit based on when or if order persists upon mixing.
The goal is to replace semantic vagueness with functional percision.
What is the definition of a heap or a pile that you are working with? Often times paradoxes arise due to some ambiguity in definitions: Russel’s paradox is such an example. The solution often involves amending the definition to be more useful.
Wavefunction
Level 5
Aug 16, 2018
1
cava:
We don't seem to have a problem saying that this is a pile or a heap. The problem arises as we try to say this is or is not with percision due to the vagueness of these terms.
@cava yes, but an ambiguous or vague term is one that does not have a good working definition which is why I asked about the specifics: so that as much ambiguity is removed as is possible.
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