Paradox Limericks

Paradox Limericks

There once was a poet from Crete

Who performed a remarkable feat

He announced to the wise

“Every Cretan tells lies”

Thus ensuring their logic’s defeat.

“What I’m telling you now isn’t true”;

Tell me, what’s a logician to do?

For it’s wrong and it’s right

And it’s black and it’s white

This confusion is making me blue.

Bertrand Russell once dolefully thought

“Is set N in itself? Is it not?

If it’s in, then it’s out;

If it’s out, then no doubt

it is in. What on Earth have I got?”

Mr. Goedel, with ill-disguised glee

One day wrote down a sentence named G.

It said, “G has no proof”

And if proof equals truth

It makes truth equal falsity. See?

Said Zeno to archer, “A quiz.

Is your arrow moving? It is

In its flight to the west

Every instant at rest

So when is it moving?” “Gee whiz!”

An electron confessed to the fact

That its nature was not too exact.

“I’m a particle, yes

That is true, more or less

But I frequently like to diffract.”

There was once an unfortunate ass

Who stopped between two heaps of grass

At the midpoint. It tried

But it couldn’t decide

Which was closer. It starved there, alas.

Or so Mr. Buridan said;

But don’t leave the donkey for dead;

For the actual mule

Was an ass, not a fool;

So it foraged at random instead.

Doc Strangelove once angrily fumed

“These peaceniks have falsely assumed!

For we’re safe if we’re gambling

And safer if scrambling

And safest if certainly doomed!”

Said a monk to a man named Joshu

“Is that dog really God?” He said “Mu”.

This answer is vexing

And highly perplexing

And that was the best he could do.