The Orthodoxy of Paradox

“As we humans delve ever deeper in our quest to reveal the ultimate nature of reality, there is a stain in the picture that emerges,” writes critic and philosopher in his new book, . “That stain is what we might call the paradox of the moment of change: the instantaneous sliver of time when something, some particle, must be both perfectly identical to itself in space and time, so as to be the thing that changes, and somehow different, so as to have changed at all.” Tracing this paradox back to Achilles and the Tortoise, finds solutions and unresolved questions in the disparate work of , , and . All. Beyond the marquee, Egginton summons a wide supporting cast— —for our triad to learn from and contradict. The result is a breezy and readable book; both a nice introduction to the orthodoxy of paradox for the casual reader and an informative (and funny) primer on various seemingly austere historical figures.