THE BOOTSTRAP PARADOX 

The Bootstrap Paradox is a theoretical paradox of time travel that occurs when an object or piece of information sent back in time becomes trapped within an infinite cause-effect loop in which the item no longer has a discernible point of origin, and is said to be “uncaused” or “self-created”. It is also known as an Ontological Paradox, in reference to ontology, a branch of metaphysics dealing with the study of being and existence.

Etymology of Bootstrap Paradox

The term Bootstrap Paradox is derived from the expression to “pull oneself over a fence by one’s bootstraps”, which indicates performing an impossible or ludicrous task. In this instance, by pulling yourself over a fence by holding onto your bootlaces and tugging upwards. The first reference to such an absurdly impossible action is widely believed to originate from an 18th-century literary classic, ‘The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchhausen’, in which the eponymous hero is stuck in a swamp, and manages to escape by pulling upwards on his own hair.

The term “bootstrap paradox” was subsequently popularized by science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, whose book, ‘By His Bootstraps’ (1941), tells the story of Bob Wilson, and the time travel paradoxes he encounters after using a time portal. One such example involves Wilson traveling to the future and being given a notebook by his future self, before then traveling to an earlier point in the future and using the book’s useful information to set himself up as a benevolent dictator. After the notebook becomes worn, Wilson copies the information into a new notebook and disposes of the original. He later muses that there never were two notebooks and that the newly created one is actually the one given to him in the far future. So who wrote the book, and where did its information actually originate?