We’re all aboard Theseus’s ship

By Jug Suraiya

On the voyage that we call life, we are all in a sense sailing on the ship of Theseus, a hero of Greek mythology. Theseus, the legendary king of the city state of Athens, rescued the sacrificial victims held hostage by the monstrous Minotaur, a beast with the head and tail of a bull and the body of a man, whom he slew in the maze of the Labyrinth and, with the 14 young men and women he had freed, sailed to safety aboard his ship to the isle of Delos.

According to the 4th century CE annalist Plutarch, citizens of Athens would each year honour Theseus by re-enacting his voyage to Delos on his ship. With the passage of time, the planks and sails of the ship decayed and had to be replaced. Over the years, all the parts of the original vessel had been changed, giving rise to the philosophical question: Was the rebuilt ship still the ship of Theseus or something entirely different?

1200 years later, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes compounded the question by proposing that if a second ship were to be built using all the discarded parts of the original, which would be the real ship of Theseus, the older one built of new parts or the new one built of old parts? What is the quiddity, or the fundamental essence, that defines the ship of Theseus?

The old saying, attributed to Heraclitus, asserts that you can’t step into the same river twice, because the flowing water isn’t the same as it was when you first stepped into it, and you’re not the same you as you were when you first walked into the water, either. The Greek philosopher uses this analogy to convey the idea that everything, rivers, humans, clouds, Earth itself, is in a state of perpetual flux, of constant change. Nothing is in a state of stasis. Nothing is permanent.

Of the approximately 300tn cells that our bodies are made up of, over 300bn, or about 1% of the total, are replaced every day. Today you are a 1% different you than the you who you were yesterday, and you will be a different you tomorrow. In 7 years, all the cells in our bodies will be replaced. So, in 7 years, we will be a 100% different from what we are today.

Our bodies are made up of seven octillion atoms, that is 7 followed by 27 zeros. When we eat, drink, breathe or indeed perform any activity or biological function, atoms from our bodies are expelled, and atoms from the biosphere, which come from other people and other sources, are absorbed by us. Everything on earth is connected in an unending circle of life.

We’re all made up of hundreds of billions of atoms that were once part of other bodies. This molecular interchangeability blurs the boundaries separating religions, races, nationalities, and all other divisiveness including that of gender. We are literally part of one another. All of us are fellow passengers on the ship of Theseus.

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