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Reductio ad absurdum, painting by John Pettie exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1884. In logic, reductio ad absurdum (Latin for "reduction to absurdity"), also known as argumentum ad absurdum (Latin for "argument to absurdity") or apagogical arguments, is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absurdity or contradiction.
Absurdity is the state or condition of being unreasonable, meaningless, or so unsound as to be irrational. "Absurd" is the adjective used to describe absurdity, e.g., "Tyler and the boys laughed at the absurd situation."
Absurdism is the philosophical thesis that life, or the world in general, is absurd. There is wide agreement that the term "absurd" implies a lack of meaning or purpose but there is also significant dispute concerning its exact definition and various versions have been suggested.
The Absurd, the conflict between the human tendency to seek a certain meaning of life and the failure to find any Absurdism, a philosophy based on the belief that the universe is irrational and meaningless; Reductio ad absurdum, a type of logical argument
Zeno's arguments may then be early examples of a method of proof called reductio ad absurdum, also known as proof by contradiction. Thus Plato has Zeno say the purpose of the paradoxes "is to show that their hypothesis that existences are many, if properly followed up, leads to still more absurd results than the hypothesis that they are one."
Isaac Barrow and Baermann used the notation Q.E.A., for "quod est absurdum" ("which is absurd"), along the lines of Q.E.D., but this notation is rarely used today. [12] A graphical symbol sometimes used for contradictions is a downwards zigzag arrow "lightning" symbol (U+21AF: ↯), for example in Davey and Priestley. [13]
The truth value 'false', or a logical constant denoting a proposition in logic that is always false (often called "falsum" or "absurdum"). The bottom element in wheel theory and lattice theory, which also represents absurdum when used for logical semantics; The bottom type in type theory, which is the bottom element in the subtype relation.
Credo quia absurdum is a Latin phrase that means "I believe because it is absurd", originally misattributed to Tertullian in his De Carne Christi.It is believed to be a paraphrasing of Tertullian's "prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est" which means "it is completely credible because it is unsuitable", or "certum est, quia impossibile" which means "it is certain because it is impossible".