Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 15, 2004

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Boyle's self-flowing flask is an impossible perpetual motion machine.
Boyle's self-flowing flask is an impossible perpetual motion machine.

A paradox is an apparently true statement that seems to lead to a logical self-contradiction, or to a situation that contradicts common intuition. The identification of a paradox based on seemingly simple and reasonable concepts has often led to significant advances in science, philosophy and mathematics. In moral philosophy, paradox plays a particularly central role in debates on ethics, particularly in the form of ethical dilemmas. Common themes in paradoxes include direct and indirect self-reference, infinity, circular definitions, and confusion of levels of reasoning. (more...)

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