On Paradoxes (1980-1989)

"But […] we recognize that the wave-particle duality does not arise because of anything paradoxical about the behavior of elementary particles, but simply from the fact that we have asked the wrong question. If we had asked 'How does an elementary particle behave?' instead of asking 'Does it behave like a particle or a wave?', we would have been able to give a perfectly sensible answer. An elementary particle is not a particle in the sense that a bullet is, and it is not a wave like the surf. It exhibits some properties that we normally associate with each of these kinds of things, but it is an entirely new kind of phenomenon." (James Trefil," From Atoms to Quarks: An Introduction to the Strange World of Particle Physics, 1980) 

"A paradox is truth standing on its head to attract attention." (Nicholas Falletta, "The Paradoxicon", 1983) 

"If there are paradoxes in mathematics, think of how many paradoxes there must be in ordinary speech. The existence of paradoxes involves logic. This led naturally to the question of local logics. It seems to me that it is no more natural to expect that a universal logic will hold than that a universal geometry holds." (Richard E Bellman, "Eye of the Hurricane: An Autobiography", 1984)

"Organizations are complex and paradoxical phenomena that can be understood in many different ways. Many of our taken-for-granted ideas about organizations are metaphorical, even though we may not recognize them as such. For example, we frequently talk about organizations as if they were machines designed to achieve predetermined goals and objectives, and which should operate smoothly and efficiently. And as a result of this kind of thinking, we often attempt to organize and manage them in a mechanistic way, forcing their human qualities into a background role. By using different metaphors to understand the complex and paradoxical character of organizational life, we are able to manage and design organizations in ways that we may not have thought possible before." (Gareth Morgan, "Images of Organization", 1986)

"Central to the development of the calculus were the concepts of convergence and limit, and with these concepts at hand it became at last possible to resolve the ancient paradoxes of infinity which had so much intrigued Zeno." (Eli Maor, "To Infinity and Beyond: A Cultural History of the Infinite", 1987)

 "The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave and also that light is a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle. Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being." (Madeline L'Engle, "Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage", 1988)

"A discovery in science, or a new theory, even where it appears most unitary and most all-embracing, deals with some immediate element of novelty or paradox within the framework of far vaster, unanalyzed, unarticulated reserves of knowledge, experience, faith, and presupposition. Our progress is narrow: it takes a vast world unchallenged and for granted." (James R Oppenheimer, "Atom and Void", 1989)