Holding Paradox

How to Hold Paradox in a World That Demands Certainty



We are on the precipice of a new way of being in the world. Another system of knowledge is revolutionizing our understanding of physical and mental space, as well as the potential of bodily movement in both. This shift is as momentous as any Renaissance, and yet many are unaware of what’s happening. To survive and thrive in such times requires that we hold contradictory ideas in mind at once while finding ways to function. All around us, today, this ability is being tested and pushed to the brink. Scientists, philosophers, and seekers have an important role to play in this transition: to hold the contrasts and bifurcations, the dualisms, rather than decide between them or prove one against the other. It is no exaggeration to say that this is a momentous task, and the world depends upon it. This book provides a new way to approach this task by telling the story of the hippocampus — also known as the brain’s GPS and the seat of memory — a literal collection of neurons with names such as place cells, border cells, head direction cells, and so on. The research arc of how this came to be, how the hippocampal formation holds both memory and movement at once, shows us how to hold contradictions without resolving them and thereby discover new capacities. Herein lie new conceptual keys for moving beyond traditional dualisms — the mental and the physical, time and space — as well as a peek into the constellation of potentials waiting beyond any either-or threshold.