<p>To write clearly about ambiguity is a feat. Ambiguity is obdurate and, for William Byers, ultimately (and deliciously) so. In its face, what are we to do? Walk away, shaking our heads, promising to return when better equipped? Or do we move on, aware that with such an intractable species as this, one makes only an uneasy peace?</p> <p>To say that Byers has written a fine book is based in part on his beginning with Wittgenstein and Einstein, and ending with Leonard Cohen and Charlie Kaufman, but more on his gimlet rendering of the ambiguous and, ultimately, the fundamental ambiguity. To conclude that his feat effectively is a resolution doubtless would offend him unless assured that it is fleeting at best.</p> <p>According to the dust jacket, Byers is a retired professor of mathematics and statistics, which accounts for the strongly mathematical turn of the book and its debt to his previously published How Mathematicians Think: Using Ambiguity, Contradiction, and Paradox to Create Mathematics (Byers, 2007). The new book, The Blind Spot: Science and the Crisis of Uncertainty , is a collection of apparent antinomies—body (brain)/mind, objective/subjective, continuous/discrete, qualitative/quantitative, content/process, conflict/unity—that turn out to be complementary perspectives and not
Apparently There Is No Science Without Ambiguity
Abstract
<p>To write clearly about ambiguity is a feat. Ambiguity is obdurate and, for William Byers, ultimately (and deliciously) so. In its face, what are we to do? Walk away, shaking our heads, promising to return when better equipped? Or do we move on, aware that with such an intractable species as this, one makes only an uneasy peace?</p> <p>To say that Byers has written a fine book is based in part on his beginning with Wittgenstein and Einstein, and ending with Leonard Cohen and Charlie Kaufman, but more on his gimlet rendering of the ambiguous and, ultimately, the fundamental ambiguity. To conclude that his feat effectively is a resolution doubtless would offend him unless assured that it is fleeting at best.</p> <p>According to the dust jacket, Byers is a retired professor of mathematics and statistics, which accounts for the strongly mathematical turn of the book and its debt to his previously published How Mathematicians Think: Using Ambiguity, Contradiction, and Paradox to Create Mathematics (Byers, 2007). The new book, The Blind Spot: Science and the Crisis of Uncertainty , is a collection of apparent antinomies—body (brain)/mind, objective/subjective, continuous/discrete, qualitative/quantitative, content/process, conflict/unity—that turn out to be complementary perspectives and notPreview Only. This article cannot be rented because we do not currently have permission from the publisher.
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Apparently There Is No Science Without Ambiguity
Miller, Harold
Follow PsycCRITIQUES
, Volume 57 (5)
PsycCRITIQUES® – Feb 1, 2012
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