The Grelling-Nelson Paradox
Is the word "heterological" heterological? Either answer generates a contradiction.
19087 min read
German logic and philosophy
Kurt Grelling
1886 – 1942
German philosopher and logician, student of David Hilbert and Leonard Nelson. In 1908 he and Nelson jointly published the paradox that bears their names: the Grelling-Nelson paradox, which shows that the ordinary notion of a word describing itself generates the same kind of contradiction that Russell found in naive set theory. Grelling was Jewish and was murdered at Auschwitz in 1942.