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What the Tortoise Said to Achilles

Lewis Carroll · 1895

A philosophical dialogue article written by Lewis Carroll for the journal Mind in 1895, exploring logical paradox.

Written by Carroll himself, this article shows his lesser-known work as a mathematical logician.

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Scanned page of the 1895 Mind article 'What the Tortoise Said to Achilles' by Lewis Carroll, headed XII.—NOTES. It is a dense block of printed text with dialogue between Achilles and the Tortoise about infinite series and Euclid's First Proposition.
Lewis Carroll, "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles," Mind, 1895.

About this source

What it is

This is a printed page from the journal Mind, 1895, containing an article titled 'What the Tortoise Said to Achilles', written by Lewis Carroll under his own name. It takes the form of a dialogue between Achilles and a Tortoise discussing infinite series and logic.

Why it matters

Carroll was not only a children's author but also a mathematician and logician, and this article shows that side of his work. It is now recognised as an important contribution to the philosophy of logic, raising puzzles about how logical inference works.

Look closer

  • How does Carroll use storytelling and characters to explore a serious logical problem?
  • Why might a writer famous for children's books also publish in an academic philosophy journal?
  • What does the dialogue form add that a plain argument would not?

This document is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Lewis Carroll on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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