The Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment that asks, “After several hundreds of years of maintenance, if each individual piece of the Ship of Theseus was replaced, one after the other, was it still the same ship” (3 May 2024)?

This thought experiment is not limited to Greek mythology. The question inquires about the identity of cars, houses, cellular life, human beings.

I thought about The Ship of Theseus while reading the history of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. There are no original members since its inception. Most, if not all, of the instruments have changed. The conductors and funders and ticket holders have come and gone. Is it the same orchestra?

Well, yes, in a spiritual sense. The Spirt of the body of the orchestra has never changed, and that is why it’s the same orchestra.

The same can be said about families. Every 200 years, the composition of families are 100% different. People are born, and then they die, but the Spirit of the family remains—or can remain. The same holds for universities, corporations, nations. They are the same even though they are made out of different parts.

My church, which has one or a few members who have been members since it was founded, is still the same despite the congregation being 99.9% different. Even when the congregation and the architecture become 100% different, it’s the same church. The Spirit moves through it.

Scaling back to the individual life, we are the same person when all the cells change and memories become inaccessible. The Spirit moving through us remains constant. What we see is a vessel, a valence, a vigor, and what we are is unfathomable meaning.