Paradox (literature)
Paradox, however, is essential to the structure and being of the poem. In "The Well Wrought Urn" Brooks shows that paradox was so essential to poetic meaning that paradox was almost identical to poetry. According to literary theorist Leroy Searle, Brooks' use of paradox emphasized the indeterminate lines between form and content. "The form of the poem uniquely embodies its meaning," and the language of the poem "affects the reconciliation of opposites or contraries." While irony functions within the poem, paradox often refers to the meaning and structure of the poem and is thus inclusive of irony. This existence of opposites or contraries and the reconciliation thereof is poetry and the meaning of the poem.
Ross–Littlewood paradox
The Ross–Littlewood paradox (also known as the balls and vase problem or the ping pong ball problem) is a hypothetical problem in abstract mathematics and logic designed to illustrate the seemingly paradoxical, or at least non-intuitive, nature of infinity. More specifically, like the Thomson's lamp paradox, the Ross–Littlewood paradox tries to illustrate the conceptual difficulties with the notion of a supertask, in which an infinite number of tasks are completed sequentially. The problem was originally described by mathematician John E. Littlewood in his 1953 book "Littlewood's Miscellany", and was later expanded upon by Sheldon Ross in his 1988 book "A First Course in Probability".