Paradoxes are many things... Artificial intelligence views them as viruses of the brain, strange replicators that unexpectedly exploit design possibilities. For the child, they are intellectual cartwheels, an everyday delight. For mathematicians and logicians, they reveal skeletons in the closet of reason. For philosophers and dramatists, they capture the contradictions of experience. The historian of ideas sees that they come in successive waves, surging through Classical Greece, the Renaissance and the twentieth century. Professor Leiber's user-friendly guide to paradoxes provides an up-to-date survey of an ancient and perennial source of puzzlement.

About the Interpretations series: The intellectual outlook of an age is defined by the interpretations it can offer, not only of its own thinking, but of the thought of the past. This series focuses on today's interpretations of important topics in the history of ideas. Though the authors express a personal view, they illuminate the topic within the context of current thought, and explain it concisely in terms accessible to non-specialists.