13
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_2
Chapter 2
On the Nature of Paradox
2.1 Fundamental Current Contradictions
When mathematicians with equations for infinity tempt fate, when logicians go
half-mad and statisticians start dangerously losing weight, or at the point etymologists and psychoanalysts converge in strikingly similar bouts of frustration, and
science races to prove itself mistaken, or an adored pet pig to one by another be
perceived as bacon, at that heaving moment, a seismic sigh, the earth, which cannot
right herself, if we have cited her properties as having shifted, is left to lawless rules
of contradiction and paradox. At least in our minds. And to the extent we will juggle
the world’s strange, entrancing, or off-putting meanings, a fundamental problem, a
human problem, refuses to be lifted.
All too admittedly, any single stash of papers, a book, a portfolio of sketches, a
diary of the subsumed and epigrammatic past, lies dormant among the top-heavy
paperweights and ruins. In August of 2010, a Google algorithm declared that
“129,864,880 books” had been “published in the modern world.”
1
According to its
methodology, divining such a number, a logical series of shortcuts to undermine
redundancy, impeding duplication, were adopted, as well as specific steps to eliminate those relics deemed somehow irrelevant. The same Shakespeare in thousands
of languages, or would that mean thousands of different Hamlets? Thumb-worn
copies of the Bible in its more than 3300 translations, or Pinocchio’s 300+ translations, Alice in Wonderland’s 174, or the more than 140 translations of Don Quixote?
2
Six editions, during Darwin’s lifetime, of his On the Origin of Species, and then the
thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of marked up copies of Darwin’s various
editions, with often illuminating marginalia, as one would expect to find in any bird,
1 “Google: There Are 129,864,880 Books in the Entire World,” by Ben Parr, August 5, 2010, https://
mashable.com/2010/08/05/number-of-books-in-the-world/Accessed February 20, 2020.
2 See UNESCO’s Index Translationum, http://www.unesco.org/xtrans/bsstatlist.aspx?lg=0,
Accessed March 3, 2020.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_2
Chapter 2
On the Nature of Paradox
2.1 Fundamental Current Contradictions
When mathematicians with equations for infinity tempt fate, when logicians go
half-mad and statisticians start dangerously losing weight, or at the point etymologists and psychoanalysts converge in strikingly similar bouts of frustration, and
science races to prove itself mistaken, or an adored pet pig to one by another be
perceived as bacon, at that heaving moment, a seismic sigh, the earth, which cannot
right herself, if we have cited her properties as having shifted, is left to lawless rules
of contradiction and paradox. At least in our minds. And to the extent we will juggle
the world’s strange, entrancing, or off-putting meanings, a fundamental problem, a
human problem, refuses to be lifted.
All too admittedly, any single stash of papers, a book, a portfolio of sketches, a
diary of the subsumed and epigrammatic past, lies dormant among the top-heavy
paperweights and ruins. In August of 2010, a Google algorithm declared that
“129,864,880 books” had been “published in the modern world.”
1
According to its
methodology, divining such a number, a logical series of shortcuts to undermine
redundancy, impeding duplication, were adopted, as well as specific steps to eliminate those relics deemed somehow irrelevant. The same Shakespeare in thousands
of languages, or would that mean thousands of different Hamlets? Thumb-worn
copies of the Bible in its more than 3300 translations, or Pinocchio’s 300+ translations, Alice in Wonderland’s 174, or the more than 140 translations of Don Quixote?
2
Six editions, during Darwin’s lifetime, of his On the Origin of Species, and then the
thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of marked up copies of Darwin’s various
editions, with often illuminating marginalia, as one would expect to find in any bird,
1 “Google: There Are 129,864,880 Books in the Entire World,” by Ben Parr, August 5, 2010, https://
mashable.com/2010/08/05/number-of-books-in-the-world/Accessed February 20, 2020.
2 See UNESCO’s Index Translationum, http://www.unesco.org/xtrans/bsstatlist.aspx?lg=0,
Accessed March 3, 2020.