ABSTRACT
The history of (Western) thought has been characterized by a never-ending swing of the pendulum between a number of basic concepts that have been regarded as mutually exclusive. The most basic of these, I suggest, are change/stability, universal/particular, knowable/unknowable, finite/infinite, singular/plural, necessary/contingent. Thus, the Greeks were already divided on whether reality is changing or unchanging; whether, at its base, it is one or many; whether reality is knowable or unknowable; whether knowledge is universal or particular, finite, or infinite; and whether phenomena are necessary or contingent (Cronin, 2006, p. 11; Stumpf, 1975, pp. 3-113). As far as the current epistemological situation is concerned, what is known as the "modernist" paradigm is usually characterized, roughly, as a system of thought that is biased towards the permanent, universal, knowable, finite, singular, and necessity pole of the binary set. Problems with this kind of thinking have been pointed out and attacked by what has become known as "postmodernism". In contrast, what is known as the "postmodernist" paradigm is usually characterized, roughly, as being biased toward the changing, individual, unknowable, infinite, plural, and contingency pole of the set of paradoxes. Both of these paradigms are currently being questioned by what could be called a complexity approach.
