Antinomy

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ænˈtɪn.ə.mi/

Definitions

1. A contradiction between two principles or laws that appear equally valid, or a situation where opposing truths seem impossible to reconcile
2. A logical contradiction arising from apparently equally valid but mutually exclusive principles or propositions
3. A paradoxical situation where two seemingly sound arguments or laws lead to opposite and irreconcilable conclusions

Etymology: In 1781 Immanuel Kant argued that human reason, pushed far enough, could prove with equal rigour that the universe had a beginning in time and that it had none, that matter is built from simple parts and that it is not, that free will exists and that everything is causally determined. He called each of these deadlocks an "Antinomie", and his Critique of Pure Reason set out four of them. The word he chose was already old. In Greek, "antinomia" meant a conflict between laws. It joins "anti-" ("against") to "nomos", "custom, usage; law". "Nomos" comes from the verb "némō", "to deal out, distribute", so a law was at root an allotment, each person's due share. The same verb lies behind "nemesis", the dispensing of what one deserves. Greek rhetoricians treated the clash of two statutes as a standard problem for an advocate: one law commands, another forbids, and the case must be argued between them. Latin borrowed the term as "antinomia", and English took it from Latin as a learned word. By the 1590s antinomy meant a contradiction within the law, or between two laws. Kant turned this old legal and rhetorical term to a new use, moving the conflict from the statute book into the mind. In his hands the clashing laws were the principles of reason itself, each argument valid, each conclusion incompatible with the other. He believed the deadlock came from treating the world as it appears to us as if it were the world as it is in itself. After him the word belonged to philosophers. Logicians gave it a second life. In 1901 Bertrand Russell found that the set of all sets that do not contain themselves both must and cannot contain itself. That result and its relatives became known as the antinomies of set theory, and they shook the foundations of mathematics. Its near twin, "antinomian", is built from the same Greek parts but means something quite different. Martin Luther used it for those who held that faith in grace freed Christians from the moral law. That word describes a person who rejects the law, while an antinomy is a conflict between two laws or principles that each seem valid.

Synonyms: contradiction, paradox