ABSTRACT
It is human nature to create dichotomies-mine versus yours, hot versus cold. Dichotomies usefully structure and simplify the world. They can also lead people astray. Aesop’s fable of The Satyr and the Man captures this risk:
Each pole of the dichotomy contains a truth-the man’s breath warmed his hands and cooled his soup. The problem is that the satyr treated the categories of hot and cold as mutually exclusive and did not seek a deeper analysis. Instead, he became agitated and fled the possibility of a unifying explanation.
