Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel is a veridical paradox (a valid argument with a seemingly absurd conclusion, as opposed to a falsidical paradox, which is a seemingly valid demonstration of an actual contradiction) about infinite sets presented by German mathematician David Hilbert (1862–1943) in the 1920s, meant to illustrate certain counterintuitive properties of infinite sets.
Read more about Hilbert's Paradox Of The Grand Hotel: The Paradox, Analysis, The Grand Hotel Cigar Mystery, References in Fiction
Famous quotes containing the words grand hotel, paradox, grand and/or hotel:
“What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat, sleep, loaf around, flirt a little, dance a little. A hundred doors leading to one hall. No one knows anything about the person next to them. And when you leave, someone occupies your room, lies in your bed. That’s the end.”
—William A. Drake (1900–1965)
“When a paradox is widely believed, it is no longer recognized as a paradox.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“We had heard of a Grand Fall on this stream, and thought that each fall we came to must be it, but after christening several in succession with this name, we gave up the search. There were more Grand or Petty Falls than I can remember.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The hotel was once where things coalesced, where you could meet both townspeople and travelers. Not so in a motel. No matter how you build it, the motel remains the haunt of the quick and dirty, where the only locals are Chamber of Commerce boys every fourth Thursday. Who ever heard the returning traveler exclaim over one of the great motels of the world he stayed in? Motels can be big, but never grand.”
—William Least Heat Moon [William Trogdon] (b. 1939)