Coexistent Contradiction

Coexistent Contradiction is the filing principle under which holdings on Floor 17 are maintained, and the formal name for the Tower's practice of retaining two mutually exclusive records of the same subject in the same place, neither suspended, neither corrected, and both available to a reader in a single sitting. It is distinguished from Direct Contradiction in that the two holdings need never be compared, reconciled, or brought into contact; it is distinguished from the procedure set out in Contradiction Resolution in that no resolution is intended at any stage. A Floor 17 shelf does not contain an error awaiting correction. It contains an arrangement awaiting use.

The principle is old; its name is not. The phrase "coexistent contradiction" appears in the Fourth Concordance no earlier than its ninth recension, and then only in a marginal note concerning the shelving of contradictory itineraries in the eastern spiral. The practice itself is considerably older than the paperwork describing it, which the Tower regards as normal.

Origin on Floor 17

Floor 17 is entered by the north aperture and is fitted throughout with double-faced shelving: a single spine of oak, faced on both sides, holding two catalogues of the same holdings in contrary order. The lower catalogue ascends; the upper descends. A reader consulting a subject at the lower face and then crossing the spine will find the same subject at the upper face, entered under a contrary account, with the same accession number and a differing seal.

The arrangement was formalised after the winter of the Second Recension, when the Office of Shelf Integrity attempted to remove one of two incompatible catalogues of the northern stairwells on the grounds that the Tower could not hold both. The removal was halted by Librarian Ordway Pell, who argued before the Concordance Bench that the two catalogues had never been shown to be incompatible in the presence of a reader, and that the Office was therefore acting on a contradiction it had itself constructed by comparing them. The Bench found for Pell on a narrow point of procedure and has never revisited the substance.

"That which has not been set side by side has not yet contradicted itself, and the Tower is not obliged to set anything side by side."

— Sixth Concordance, Annex 2, ruling of the Bench in the matter of the northern stairwells

Relation to the Doctrine of Coexistent Potentialities

The relationship between Coexistent Contradiction and the Doctrine of Coexistent Potentialities is a standing sore between Division VI: Unallocated Phenomena and the Floor 17 keepers. Division VI holds, on the authority of the Eleventh Concordance, that an unmaterialised subject retains full potentiality and should remain at Tier 2 without review; the Floor 17 keepers hold that a subject may equally be said to retain two full actualities, both materialised, neither deferred. The two positions were filed together on Floor 17 in 11 Abril 1402 and have coexisted, without contradiction, ever since.

Librarian Cassia Venn, in her survey of the division's methods, observed that the Floor 17 keepers had "resolved the difficulty by refusing to notice that they had made one" (Memorandum 44/6, Office of Doctrinal Survey). The memorandum was itself filed on Floor 17 in both its original and its corrected form.

The Venn–Pell Dispute

The principal scholarly disagreement concerns whether Coexistent Contradiction is a species of the Coexistent Potentialities doctrine or a repudiation of it. The Ninth Concordance classes it as a species, on the reasoning that a contradiction held in suspension is a potentiality not yet discharged. The Twelfth Concordance, Annex 7, classes it as a repudiation, on the reasoning that both accounts are already fully written and therefore not potential at all.

Both annexes are in force. The Concordance Bench has twice declined to reconcile them, most recently in 1408, when it held that the question was one "properly left to the shelves, which have considered it at greater length" (Ruling 1408/19). Practitioners generally cite whichever annex suits the shelf in front of them.

Procedure and its failures

A shelf keeper receiving a contradictory pair is required to seal both holdings with the Double Seal of Floor 17, enter each in the catalogue opposite the other, and record the accession in the daily ledger without comment. No note of preference is permitted. The seals are wax, stamped at both faces, and must be renewed every seventh year; a shelf found with one seal and not the other is reported to the Office of Shelf Integrity as an omission, not as an error.

The procedure has failed repeatedly, always in the same way. A keeper, finding one account plainly better supported, quietly annotates the weaker entry, and the annotation becomes the beginning of a resolution. The most celebrated instance is that of Keeper Anselm Rook, who in 1391 added the marginal words "this is the true one" to the upper catalogue of the western aisle. The annotation was discovered, the shelf was impounded, and the Office ruled that the words had destroyed the coexistence of the pair, since a reader could no longer approach either account without being told what to think. Rook was reassigned to the Sub-Basement Inventory and the marginal note was sealed over, unremoved, beneath the Double Seal. It remains legible through the wax.

Holdings and objections

Floor 17 presently holds the standard paired catalogues of the northern stairwells, the two accounts of the Elara Contradiction, the original and corrected forms of Memorandum 44/6, and the full file of the Polvek Contradiction, which occupies both faces and part of the ceiling. A shelf on the eastern aisle holds a single map of Floor 17, drawn twice, in which the two drawings disagree about the position of the eastern aisle.

The standing objection to the principle, raised at every audit since 1366, is that a reader who consults only one face of a shelf will depart with a settled view and no warning. The Contradiction Audit of 1403 recommended a notice to that effect at the north aperture. The recommendation was filed on Floor 17, in two contrary drafts, and has not been implemented.

"The reader is not owed a warning. The reader is owed a second face, which is provided."

— Office of Shelf Integrity, memorandum of reply to the Audit of 1403, clause 3