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The Ship of Theseus. AI image The Paradox of Continuity Among the thought experiments inherited from antiquity, none has more sharply illuminated the problem of identity and persistence than the Ship of Theseus . First recounted by Plutarch in the Life of Theseus , the story presents a simple yet disconcerting thought experiment: the Athenians preserved Theseus’s ship as a monument, periodically replacing its decayed planks until, over time, none of the original materials remained. Was it still the same ship? The paradox has since been revisited by thinkers from Hobbes to Locke, each seeking to locate the ground of identity amid transformation. For Hobbes, the puzzle deepened when imagining a second ship assembled from the discarded planks. Which, then, is the true ship? Such reflections often revolve around form and substance : whether identity lies in the continuity of matter or in the persistence of structure. Yet, perhaps the problem itself presupposes too much — namely, that ...