Reasoning There are 60 squares of size 1 x 1. There are 35 squares of size 2 x 2. There are 12 squares of size 3 x 3. There are 3 squares of size 4 x 4.
A million grains of sand is a heap. If we remove one grain of sand from this heap, we will still have a heap.
We can now keep repeating (2) until we only have a single grain of sand remaining.
Is this a heap? Clearly not. But what went wrong with our thinking?
This is called the Sorites paradox (soros being Greek for "heap") and is a classic paradox that has no real answer.
Both (1) and (2) are true, and we can indeed keep removing one grain of sand until we have a single grain remaining. If we remove one more grain, we're left with nothing, is this still a heap?
