What is paradox?

Paradox is a concept in personal epistemology: Some contradictions are features not bugs — they reflect genuine complexity in reality.

Example: Wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics is not a failure of physics — it is physics telling you that reality at the subatomic scale does not conform to your intuition about discrete objects. Niels Bohr's complementarity principle (1928) says both descriptions are required for a complete picture. The contradiction is not waiting to be resolved. It is the resolution.

This concept is part of Phase 19 (Contradiction Resolution) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for contradiction resolution.