Direct Contradiction

The term Direct Contradiction is the formal designation, under Article 2 of the Contradiction Protocol, for a Contradiction in which two documented assertions oppose one another without the intervention of any intermediate clause, derivation, or inference. It is distinguished from oblique contradiction, in which the opposition is reached only by a chain of two or more citations, and from what the Contradiction Annex calls "ambient contradiction" — the ordinary condition of a floor whose holdings have never been read against one another. A Direct Contradiction is not a defect in the record but a recognised property of it, and a great many Tower procedures exist chiefly to determine whether one has occurred.

Definition and the question of the middle term

Concordance XIV, Clause 9 defines a Direct Contradiction as one "standing in plain opposition, the one to the other, with no clause between them and no arithmetic". The phrase no arithmetic was added by amendment in YSP 611 after the dispute on the Nineteenth Spiral, where a clerk argued that two holdings describing the same stairwell as "fourteen risers" and "fifteen risers" were not in direct opposition because the second might be reconciled arithmetically if one riser were counted twice. The Direct Grant Interpretation Panel declined to hear the matter on the grounds that it concerned counting rather than authority.

The principal difficulty is establishing the absence of a middle term. Because any two clauses in the archive can be connected by enough citation, clerks are required to demonstrate that no such connection exists, which is itself a form of proof that has never been completed to general satisfaction. The Contradiction Audit records that of 4,118 Direct Contradictions certified in the first decade of the present recension, 3,090 were later reclassified as oblique once an intermediate clause was found, and a further 611 were reclassified back.

Procedure

Discovery of a putative Direct Contradiction obliges the finding clerk to raise a Contradiction Flagging without delay, whereupon Contradiction Loading proceeds under the corps of Contradiction Librarians. Where the two clauses derive from separate Concordances, the Stasis Protocol places the affected measurements or designations in a state of Operational Stasis until resolution, which on the Forty-Second Landing has now lasted since YSP 688; the landing's width has not been restated in that time and visitors are advised not to measure it.

A certified Direct Contradiction is entered in the Contradiction Filings and sealed by a Contradiction Librarian, no filing being authentic without the seal. The Certification of Contradiction is issued by the Annex in first instance. Where the finding party declines to proceed, or concludes in advance that none exists, the Contradiction Protocol applies in its penal aspect; under the Contradiction Protocol (practice), refusal, delay, or preemptive conclusion is a violation of the Protocol itself.

Precedence

Resolution follows the doctrine of chronological precedence: where the two clauses are in direct contradiction, the more recently amended prevails. This doctrine has the signal merit of being mechanical, and the signal disadvantage of being wrong about half the time, since a recent amendment is frequently a correction that the clerk who drafted it had not yet finished. The Addendum Provisos were devised to govern cases in which an Addendum and a Concordance clause directly oppose; they assign precedence by a system of temporal and hierarchical markers so elaborate that the Panel has twice been asked to interpret them and twice returned the question unread.

"Where a Direct Contradiction is established between a Concordance clause and an Addendum, the later marker governs unless the earlier marker is sealed, in which case the seal governs, unless the seal is contested, in which case nothing governs and the matter rests."

— Addendum Provisos, Annex 2, Clause 4

Disputes

Concordance XIV, Clause 9 and Concordance XXII, Clause 3 are themselves in Direct Contradiction. The former requires that direct opposition be plain on the face of the two documents; the latter requires that it be established by Empirical Demonstration, that is, by a clerk's direct observation recorded at the moment of observation. The Chamber of Provisional Contradiction has held, in a ruling of YSP 731 that has never been formally withdrawn, that the two clauses contradict one another directly and that the contradiction is therefore governed by whichever of them was amended more recently, which depends on which is the Addendum — a question the Chamber declined to settle because settling it would require reading both.

Severity Classifications formalised by the Contradiction Librarians in YSP 724 assign Direct Contradictions to Class II, below Class I (Direct Contradictions between sealed instruments) and above Class III (Contradictions that are direct but not yet acknowledged). Class III exists because acknowledgement is held to alter the character of a contradiction; Class II exists because Class I was found, on review, to be empty. The classification of Class I as an inhabited category is disputed and the dispute is itself, by common consent, a Direct Contradiction of Class III.

Notable cases

The most cited instance remains the Polvek Contradiction, in which two holdings describing the same chamber were found in plain opposition with no clause between them. The finding clerk, Aurel Sabat, certified the contradiction on the fourth day of the eleventh month of YSP 706 and was thereafter reassigned to a floor whose name is not recorded, where he is said to have kept up a correspondence with the Annex for nineteen years. His grievance — that he had certified the contradiction and was then asked to certify that it did not exist — is preserved in the filings as Sabat's Memorial and is read aloud at the opening of every Audit.

The Elara Contradiction and the matters collected under the Protocol for Cross-Floor Contradiction are treated separately, the first because it involved no documents, the second because it involved too many. Practitioners are reminded that the Contradiction Warrens are not a place to look for Direct Contradictions, as they contain mostly oblique ones, and that the corridors there are narrow. Lanterns must be carried on the lower levels.