# Ship of Theseus | | The **Ship of Theseus** is a thought experiment about whether an object which has had all of its original components replaced remains the same object. According to legend, Theseus, the mythical Greek founder-king of Athens, rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the minotaur and then escaped onto a ship going to Delos. Each year, the Athenians commemorated this by taking the ship on a pilgrimage to Delos to honor Apollo. A question was raised by ancient philosophers: After several centuries of maintenance, if each individual part of the Ship of Theseus was replaced, one at a time, was it still the same ship? | |-|-| | | wikipedia:: [Ship of Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus) | > [!summary]- Wikipedia Synopsis > The **Ship of Theseus** is a thought experiment about whether an object which has had all of its original components replaced remains the same object. According to legend, Theseus, the mythical Greek founder-king of Athens, rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the minotaur and then escaped onto a ship going to Delos. Each year, the Athenians commemorated this by taking the ship on a pilgrimage to Delos to honor Apollo. A question was raised by ancient philosophers: After several centuries of maintenance, if each individual part of the Ship of Theseus was replaced, one at a time, was it still the same ship? > > In contemporary philosophy, this thought experiment has applications to the philosophical study of identity over time, and has inspired a variety of proposed solutions and concepts in contemporary philosophy of mind concerned with the persistence of personal identity. ---