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Sarah Schnellbacher's picture

Li Br Ar...the elements of the Library of Babel

Submitted by Sarah Schnellbacher on Mon, 04/25/2011 - 4:09am.

I hadn't thought of the Library of Babel before in this context. Earlier in the course Paul discussed how he didn't think there could be a Library of Babel that encompassed everything because it wouldn't include itself. What if the LIbrary did include everything? Atomically the library would have every atom in the universe. Couldn't these atoms like words be rearranged over and over again. We don't think of matter expanding even though the organization of atoms changes to create new body plans but essentially it is all just the same number of oxygen and carbon, etc. atoms. If words are the atoms of the library, then even the rearrangement of words does not create more words in the dictionary. Because the dictionary is somewhat constant, can we justify saying that the Library of Babel must be expanding?

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