—Flickr image courtesy Paul Boor
The past few weeks have been one of those rare times when I was able to take a deep dive into my own work and explore connections—ironic, I talk about connections all the time, but it’s not easy for me to articulate the connections that motivate my scholarship.
Let’s consider three things I’ve been doing recently:
The first is by far the most conceptual: it’s where I’ve asked philosophical questions like “What to do with binaries?” The third sounds eminently practical: it’s about reaching out and connecting with people, right? These two seem to have nothing in common. Then there is EcoTypes, which can be hard to place along this conceptual/practical spectrum as at first glance it looks like a student survey and resource.
How’s that for three unrelated research topics? But there is an odd thread connecting them, something that reaches back twenty years in my work (e.g., Proctor 1998): paradox. I can’t think of a notion that sounds more fluffy, more esoteric, more “what do you mean by that??” than paradox, but it’s stuck around with me for decades. That’s why I have that lovely (attributed) Niels Bohr quote on my home page: “The opposite of a truth is a falsehood, but the opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth.”
Here’s what paradox means to me in these three contexts:
- Paradox may be a better way to resolve binaries than counting to two (reinforcing divides) or counting to one (mushing it all together).
- Paradox may be at the heart of the differences defining EcoTypes poles and themes, thus at the heart of our differences with each other.
- Paradox could be a goal for engagement across difference, i.e. as not about finding agreement but ultimately about finding deep disagreement.
Each of these statements above may sound puzzling! I know, I know. Communicating paradox is a challenge. I think I need to start amassing a repository of good paradox stories, cases that help more of us understand and appreciate it.
At least I feel that my work is not taking me in three different directions!…there’s a resonance among these efforts for sure, if a surprising and admittedly confusing one.
Your thoughts, please?