PARADOX
by Don L. F. Nilsen
and Alleen Pace Nilsen
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LEWIS CARROLL
Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking
Glass are filled with ironies and paradoxes:
• Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things
before breakfast.
• The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday---but never jam
to-day.
• Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep
in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you
must run at least twice as fast as that.
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CATCH-22
• The expression “Catch-22” in Joseph Heller’s
antiwar novel is so intriguing that the book’s title is
now in dictionaries as the name for any tricky
problem, especially one for which the only solution
is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem.
• In Heller’s book, the character Yossarian would be
excused from flying bombing missions if he were
declared insane. However, the fact that he is trying
to get out of flying bombing missions proves his
sanity; he therefore has to keep flying.
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• Another paradox in the novel Catch 22
is that the pilots can go home as soon
as they have flown a certain number of
missions, but the number of missions
keeps being increased.
• This actually happened to Joseph
Heller when he was a pilot in World
War II.
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• People who can’t get a job until they have experience and who
can’t get experience until they have a job are in a Catch-22.
• So are authors who can’t get their manuscripts published until
they have an agent but can’t get an agent until they have been
published.
• A newspaper story under the headline “Texas in Catch-22” told
about a Texas state law forbidding the execution of anyone
insane.
• A prisoner on death row refused to take the medication that
would keep him sane.
• This is the kind of irony illustrated by many urban legends and
contemporary novels, films, and plays.
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GILBERT AND SULLIVAN
• Gilbert and Sullivan often relied on paradox
for comic effect. In The Pirates of Penzance,
they composed a song about paradoxes:
How quaint the ways of paradox!
At common sense she gaily mocks!
A paradox, a paradox,
A most ingenious paradox!
Ha! ha! ha! ha!
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GREEK PHILOSOPHERS
• The Greek philosophers often wrestled with
paradoxes.
• The most famous was credited to the Cretan
philosopher Epimenides: “All Cretans are
liars.”
• Epimenides was a Cretan. Therefore, If he is
lying, then the statement must be true. But if
the statement is true, he must be lying.
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PARADOX VS.
CONTRADICTION
• Paradoxes are statements that seem contradictory,
unbelievable, or absurd, but in some sense are
nevertheless true.
• Because paradoxes highlight breakdowns in our
expectations of a logical universe, they are sources
of both delight and consternation as the human mind
works to figure out how people can in good faith talk
about a “large mouse” running between the legs of a
“small elephant” or can make sense out of the
Yiddish curse, “He should drop dead, God forbid!”
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PARADOXES AND PARADIGM
SHIFTS
• Whenever a paradigm shift occurs in a
culture there are many paradoxes, because
two social systems are competing with each
other (the old one and the new one).
• The paradox can be part of both of these
systems.
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SCIENCE FICTION
• Paradoxes are explorations of philosophy,
logic and social criticism.
• They are a verbal means of acknowledging
real world conditions and frustrations.
• When put into “other” worlds (science fiction
or fantasy), paradoxes can be even more
intriguing.
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• For example, the “grandfather paradox” in
science fiction is a variation on the plot
technique in which a time-traveler goes back
and murders his own grandfather before the
time-traveler’s parent was born.
• This is a brain teaser because if the
grandfather were prematurely killed then the
grandchild couldn’t have been born and
wouldn’t have been able to go back and
commit the murder.
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SIGNIFICANT PARADOXES FROM THE
16TH CENTURY TO THE 20TH CENTURY
• Sits he on ever so high a throne, a man still
sits on his bottom. (Michel Elyquem de
Montaigne, 1533-1592)
• We have just enough religion to make us
hate, but not enough to make us love one
another. (Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745)
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• I laugh, so that I may not cry. (Pierre
Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais,
1732-1799)
• When a feller says, “It hain’t th’ money,
but th’ principle o’ th’ thing,” it’s the
money. (Josh Billings [pseudonym for
Henry Wheeler Shaw], 1818-1885)
 Nowadays people know the price of
everything and the value of nothing.
(Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900)
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• There ain’t any answer. There ain’t
going to be any answer. There never
has been an answer. That’s the
answer. (Gertrude Stein, 1874-1946)
• The vital question today is not whether
there will be life after death, but
whether there was life before death.
(Marshall McLuhan, 1911-1990)
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• When I grow up I want to be a little boy.
(Joseph Heller, 1923-1999)
• [in reference to cartoonist Garry
Trudeau] As with all anti-Establishment
figures, Mr. Trudeau will soon be an
honored member of the Establishment.
(Art Buchwald, 1925-)
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Visual Paradox
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