The “paradox of the heap” seems at first like a trick, a brainteaser that must have some clever catch. By the time of her death from brain cancer in July at 48, Delia Graff Fara, a philosopher at Princeton, had done just that. Repeat this process enough times, however, and you have a heap of sand that contains, say, one grain. When it came to racial diversity, an area in which philosophy is similarly lopsided, Fara was also a champion, if more circumspect. At the end of her life, Fara became interested in the philosophy of race.

Source: New York Times December 28, 2017 09:30 UTC