ABSTRACT
The word 'crack' has a remarkable number of uses and meanings. Collins Concise Dictionary lists 31 including: a narrow fissure; to break without separation of the parts; to tell a joke; to force open a safe; to solve a code. Most dramatic is the end of the world - the crack of doom. A crack is a generally unwanted discontinuity: a discrepancy in normal reality which may, however, reveal surprising hidden truths. Cracks can be deeply, sometimes far too deeply, revealing. Exploring cracks can lead to drastic rethinking, even to the collapse of an entire way of seeing, which allows the creation of a new 'Kuhnian' paradigm when an entire science looks and is very different. But cracks are not for everyone. They can be unsightly and dangerous. The owner of a valuable but damaged pot will turn it to the wall to hide the cracks, and a decorator will paper over the cracks.
