Lewis Carroll Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English writer of world-famous children's fiction, notably "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and its sequel "Through the Looking-Glass". He was noted for his facility at word play, logic and fantasy. The poems "Jabberwocky" and "The Hunting of the Snark" are classified in the genre of literary nonsense. He was also a mathematician, photographer and Anglican deacon. Carroll came from a family of high church Anglicans, and developed a long relationship with Christ Church, Oxford, where he lived for
What the Tortoise Said to Achilles What the Tortoise Said to Achilles "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles", written by Lewis Carroll in 1895 for the philosophical journal "Mind", is a brief allegorical dialogue on the foundations of logic. The title alludes to one of Zeno's paradoxes of motion, in which Achilles could never overtake the tortoise in a race. In Carroll's dialogue, the tortoise challenges Achilles to use the force of logic to make him accept the conclusion of a simple deductive argument. Ultimately, Achilles fails, because the clever tortoise leads him into an infinite regression. The discussion begins by considering the following logical argument: