202308281423 Ship of Theseus

The Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment first recorded by Plutarch in his Life of Theseus which questions whether an object which has had all of its original components replaced over time remains the same object.¹ This raises questions about the philosophy of identity and has influenced a wide range of western philosophy.

Thomas Hobbes later extended the thought experiment to ask whether if a person collected all the parts that were replaced and made a ship out of those parts, which of the ships would be the original. He goes on to sketch out a system that allows for differing kinds of identity.

In 202203210833 Systems thinking, we would answer this question by saying that the purpose of an individual — its system identity — is continuous as total substitutions are made. We use this same line of thought to describe other systems like a company or the government; though all the members of these systems may change, they retain an identity, system interconnections, and a systemic purpose. In fact a system may retain its identity even with different purposes or interconnections, but those are much more drastic alterations to the system than the elements.