Paradoxes

appealing because they help determine to what extent an item goes into a category. There are fuzzy boundaries between categories, and it's hard to tell if an object can be a member. Fuzzy categories allow graded membership, which helps escape some paradoxes and handle hard categories. It allows us to say a tiger can be a cat .05 and a house cat a…

Paul Gilroy introduced the concept of the ‘Black Atlantic’ in his 1993 novel The Black Atlantic:Modernity and Double Consciousness as he describes a counterculture to European modernity and modernism. Gilroy’s thesis argues against essentialist versions of racial identities and nationalisms and rather emphasizes the concept of a shared culture, relatable to a majority of diverse communities around the world. He proposes the idea of the Atlantic to be treated as “one single, complex unit of…

James Joyce, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. Characteristics of Modern literature include: transformation of past traditions, such as knowledge versus ignorance, individualism versus conformity, and using Paradoxes to describe reality. Fahrenheit…

Did you know our founding father thrived on the fruits of slave labor during the Colonial Era? Our founding fathers who formed a free country based on individual liberty and freedom were also slave owners. “How could they write such fiery and inspiring messages of liberty in one hand while wielding a slave-driving whip in the other?” Thomas Jefferson, one of the originators of the Declaration of Independence, stated, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”…

R.K. Narayan is the foremost name in contemporary Indian English literature. He is essentially ironic and realistic in his vision of life. His stories and novels, including the present work, The Vendor of Sweets, reflect his awareness about the fundamental disharmonies and absurdities which Life and World constantly throw in our way. Narayan accepts the realities of life ungrudgingly, taking things as they come to him – and so do his characters. Nowhere does he seem to be writing with an idea of…

The movie starts off with Charles Foster Kane which was produced by, directed and starred by Orson Welles. The movie begins with the the newsreel obituary footage that tells us about the life of Charles Foster Kane. It keeps us oriented as the screenplay progresses, piecing together the memories of those who knew him – Jed Leland his best friend, Susan Alexander his second wife and Mr. Bernstein, his business wizard were some of the few. “I don’t think any word can explain a man’s life”. The…

In the first chapter of this book, Bohm discusses the differences between “making something in common” and “to create something in common”. This is his first of many examples of subtle changes in definitions of words and ideas. In this example, to make something in common is similar to a procedure. There is already an outline on how something is done. To create something in common is a new interpretation between what is said and what is understood. For example, if two people are having a…

During the years following the Patristic era, Christian theologians and philosophers began to move away from mysticism and Neo-Platonism in order to synthesize Christian doctrine with systematic Aristotelian philosophy. This movement would be come known as Scholasticism, and it would become the principle school of thought throughout the medieval period. During this period, the line between philosophy and theology was blurred, and the problems of, psychology, metaphysics, and ethics were admitted…

produces higher performing staff (1996). While some may find this strategy too risky, I contend that avoiding the risk, as our department does now, is encouraging our declining sales in a negative manner for most cases. In Alex Lowy’s article on the paradoxes of problem solving, the author discusses this in what he calls Herbert Simon’s dilemma and the paradox where the solution is the problem (2011b). Herbert Simon’s dilemma discusses the paradox that in some cases a manager has to make use of…

In William Shakespeare’s play, Othello, he uses duality and paradoxes to reveal parts of human nature that people wish to ignore. The play is about man named Othello who marries above his station and wrestles with his own insecurities. Playing on his insecurities, Iago, the antagonist, uses Othello’s love for his wife, Desdemona, and his own reputation for honesty as mean to enact his revenge for Othello’s alleged affair with his wife, Emelia. Honest to a fault, Iago embodies the paradox of a…