Buridan s Principle Leslie 1984

Abstract:  The problem of Buridan's Ass, named after the fourteenth century French philosopher Jean Buridan, states that an ass placed equidistant between two bales of hay must starve to death because it has no reason to choose one bale over the other. With the bene t of modern mathematics, the argument can be expressed as follows. Assume that, at time 0, the ass is placed at position x along the line joining the bales of hay, where one bale is at position 0 and the other at position 1, so 0 0 is a function of two arguments: the time t and the starting position x. Let A t(x) denote that position. For simplicity, assume that when the ass reaches abaleofhayitstays there forever, so for all t 0: A t(0) = 0, A t(1) = 1, and 0 A t(x) 1forany x with 0