Author: Wu Li

Email: wuliheron@hotmail.com

Existence is demonstrably paradoxical, that is, it does not make rational sense. Nature may make perfectly rational sense, but existence itself is clearly irrational and, thus, possibly supernatural. Attempts to explain this paradox have proliferated since the dawn of humanity, but all of these attempts have led back to paradox rather than resolving the paradox of existence.

            The concept of eternity presents one such failed attempt to explain the origin of existence. Some argue that if existence has no beginning or end it is not paradoxical. Unfortunately the concept of eternity itself involves the paradoxical concept of infinity. Lao Tzu expressed this conundrum of infinity and the paradox of existence with elegant classic flare some twenty-five hundred years ago:

      The mother of nature.
   It has no name,

            But I call it "the Way";
                It has no limit, but I call it "limitless".

To declare something is infinite is to assert that it has no limits. However, this presents a paradox because the statement contradicts itself. Specifically, it imposes the limit on itself that there are no limits. Because of this irrational self-contradictory and self-referential statement we can interpret infinities and paradoxes any way we choose and none can prove us wrong. We can accept them at face value as apparently irrational and inexplicable, deny they are irrational, or simply ignore them.

This inability to clearly express the infinite and paradoxical rationally has not prevented people around the globe from using the terms for everything from casual everyday use to elaborate engineering designs and obscure theological debates. Infinity, for example, is central to the Calculus, which has revolutionized modern science. Thus, paradoxes and infinities are not so easily ignored as meaningless, trivial, or useless.

For all these reasons and more, existence presents the astonishing likelihood that at least one ineffable paradox is actually real and is not merely the result of our ignorance, lack of insight, or imagination. Whether invoking the concepts of eternity, Oneness, or the supernatural each new explanation put forward for the origin of existence has ended in paradox. For something to be eternal, God-like, or all encompassing invokes logically impenetrable paradox. If God or eternity really can explain existence, then where did they come from? Rational explanations to this puzzle of ultimate origins are patently impossible by the very definition of logic if, indeed, existence truly is a paradox, as it certainly appears to be.

Now, there is no doubt that when people use the word infinity they are usually referring to something so vast it may be impossible to measure. Even so, like countless reflections in a house of mirrors, with infinity you can never be quite certain if what you are looking at is real or just an illusory reflection. Whichever way you turn looks the same and where exactly we might be within the maze of reflections, much less if there is a way out of the maze, cannot be determined just by looking around.  William Blake expressed the somehow comprehensible and, yet, incomprehensible nature of infinity in his popular poem, “Auguries of Innocence”:

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wildflower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour

In an actual house of mirrors we can walk right up to the nearest image and touch it to see if it is an actual object or just another reflection and, using this hands on method, we can find our way out of the maze. But this direct approach is not possible in the case of infinity. To date no one has ever proven any kind of infinity actually exists in the real world much less that the concept is rational. Everything science has investigated to date has proven to either be rational and finite or presumably irrational.

Among the many ramifications of this base ignorance is nothing less than the foundations of logic, the sciences, and physical reality itself. The paradox of existence has proven impossible for all rational investigations attempted thus far for obvious reasons. Therefore, a more pragmatic approach is to assume it is utterly impenetrable to reason until proven otherwise, and then move on to determine how best to how to use paradoxes like any other handy and ubiquitous tool.