things and, let us say, isomorphically, the structure of our minds.
Physics since Newton and into the 20th century was divided into those, following Newton, who affirmed a particle
theory of light and others who maintained that light was a wave. It was assumed, using formal logic, that light could
be only one or the other. But physicists now affirm that light has both properties, defying what a simplistic
application of the LONC had led researchers to expect. Quantum mechanics research has revealed another sort of
paradox. When attempting to measure the behavior of certain subatomic particles, researchers are unable to measure
both speed and location (called Heisenberg's Indeterminacy Principle.) If physicists set up their equipment in one
way, they can measure its speed; if in another way, they can establish its location; but never both. There appears to
be a fundamental limit to what humans are able to observe, a phenomenon that seems counterintuitive to reason.
Time, also, offers mysteries. Is time a sequence of discrete events or is it an ongoing, continuous, flowing process
without parts? It's hard to say. (Steven Ratliff, personal communication) Such paradoxes have provided
constructive challenges for physicists. In the words of Niels Bohr, There is "no progress without paradox." Alan
Lightman, Dance for Two (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996), 32.
features of human life seem irreducible to brain events, e.g., the experience of color, emotion, and consciousness
itself. In another vein, the human soul seems to be composed of a set of identifiable immaterial structures (reason,
memory, emotional states, etc.), yet the soul is experienced as an ever-changing stream of consciousness and
purposive activity, never fully defined by a finite set of thoughts and memories. Also, adult humans are to be treated
as responsible individual beings, yet they also act as followers, members of the crowd, influenced by other humans.
Some have argued that the best way to help disadvantaged minorities is to give them special privileges to help them
overcome their poverty while others argue that all humans need to take responsibility for themselves in order to
better themselves. A similar quandary: are minorities helped more by emphasizing our commonality or our
diversity?
emphasize the need for objectivity and universally agreed-upon techniques for determining the object's nature,
literary critics typically focus on the subject's internal representations of reality. Each option seems rationally
justified, though by itself, it is only a part of the truth. And can we ever really know another person? There seems
to be a paradoxical tension between knowing about another and the sense that there is something indefinable about
the other that is beyond our grasp.
capacity to understand them comprehensively.
Doctrine of God, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1977), ch. 1.
Systematic Theology, 2nd ed. (St. Louis: Presbyterian Pub., 1878), 179. "I pray the student to bear in mind, that I am
not here attempting to explain the Trinity, but just the contrary: I am endeavoring to convince him that it cannot be
explained." More optimistic are contemporary Christian philosophers like Stephen T. Davis, Logic and the Nature
of God, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983); and Peter van Inwagen, God Knowledge & Mystery, (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1995), ch. 8, 9; who have worked hard to elucidate the logical coherence of the trinity
doctrine.