In the 14th century the French philosopher Jean Buridan described a donkey that, unable to choose between two bales of hay, starves to death. Like the fictional donkey, people often must decide ...

The tale of Buridan’s ass, the donkey who starved because she couldn’t decide between two haystacks, holds lessons for decision-making and overthinking.

Jean Buridan was a pretty smart guy. Born in the 1300s, he came up with the idea of “impetus” – what we would now call inertia. Objects, he said, are set into motion by forces and move ...

The concept was posited by philosophers Aristotle, Jean Buridan, and Baruch Spinoza, in different forms. The question was whether the donkey would choose one need over the other or remain ...

The name is a reference to the 14th-Century French philosopher Jean Buridan, who had said, “Should two courses be judged equal, then the will cannot break the deadlock, all it can do is to ...

The donkey got its name from Jean Buridan, the nominalist fourteenth-century philosopher and Catholic priest who wrote extensively about free will.

More specifically, the donkey is famously stuck in a choice dilemma described by French philosopher Jean Buridan. The donkey in question faces a tricky choice. She finds herself in the middle of ...

In the 14th century the French philosopher Jean Buridan described a donkey that, unable to choose between two bales of hay, starves to death. Like the fictional donkey, people often must decide ...