The Nature of Paradoxes/the Natural Paradox

Abstract

Paradoxes have appeared repeatedly throughout this work. In Chapter 2, I suggested that the knowledge produced through most of the twentieth century in OR followed the strictures of science and rationality. In so doing, paradoxes were relegated to a more minor position. Science privileges and produces knowledge that is factual, reliable, verifiable, and generalizable. Knowledge of this sort is difficult to reconcile with paradoxes because paradoxes are not necessarily factual, reliable, verifiable, or generalizable. It is much more difficult to make recommendations and policies based on paradoxical knowledge or conclusions. For these reasons, OR has engaged paradoxes from a modernist perspective that is inimical to the “logic” of paradoxes.