... of irony illustrated by many urban legends an

1
PARADOX

• by Don L. F. Nilsen
• and Alleen Pace Nilsen

2
LEWIS CARROLL

• Lewis Carrolls Alice in Wonderland and Through
  the Looking Glass are filled with ironies and
  paradoxes
• Why, sometimes Ive 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.

3
CATCH-22

• The expression Catch-22 in Joseph Hellers
  antiwar novel is so intriguing that the books
  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 Hellers 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.

4

• 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.

5

• People who cant get a job until they have
  experience and who cant get experience until
  they have a job are in a Catch-22.
• So are authors who cant get their manuscripts
  published until they have an agent but cant 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.

6
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!

7
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.

8
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!

9
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.

10

• 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.
  

11

• 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-travelers parent
  was born.
• This is a brain teaser because if the grandfather
  were prematurely killed then the grandchild
  couldnt have been born and wouldnt have been
  able to go back and commit the murder.

12
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)

13

• I laugh, so that I may not cry. (Pierre Augustin
  Caron de Beaumarchais, 1732-1799)
• When a feller says, It haint th money, but th
  principle o th thing, its 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)

14

• There aint any answer. There aint going to be
  any answer. There never has been an answer.
  Thats 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)

15

• 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-)

16
Visual Paradox
17
(No Transcript)
18
(No Transcript)
19
(No Transcript)
20
(No Transcript)
21
(No Transcript)
22
(No Transcript)
23
(No Transcript)
24
(No Transcript)