Berry paradox
Paradoja de Berry
- Date
- 1906 · confidence medium
- Place
- Oxford, England, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- Bertrand Russell
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What was discovered
Self-referential paradox arising from the phrase 'the smallest positive integer not definable in under sixty letters', attributed by Bertrand Russell to Oxford librarian G. G. Berry.
What it led to
- Influence on debates over the foundations of logic and self-reference paradoxes
- Connection to Richard's paradox and Tarski's undefinability theorem
- Contribution to early-20th-century set theory and mathematical logic
- Recurring example in the philosophy of language on definability