More thinking about the moebius strip of contraction and expansion:

Have continued mulling over what seemed to me @ first a strong (& irreconcilable?) juxtaposition between Mark's claim that "Prediction is the Gold Standard of Understanding"" and Paul's argument that the goal of science is bringing into existence "previously unconceived alternatives." Alan's talk this week got me visualizing a way to take these two bookends, these "two sides of emergence," of expansion and contraction, and "twist" these parts (with a turn like that which produced Alan's moebius strip) into a whole that has a single "side"--a single coherent argument. It does seem to me now that the sort of expansion of alternatives that is Paul's goal is facilitated by the sort of reduction of possibilities that is Mark's. That gives us a single process: a loop--or moebius strip--in which contraction serves the function of creating previously unconceived alternatives.

Not unrelatedly? turns out the Dalai Lama is an emergenist. The NYTimes reports that he "rests his faith on surprise": “Until the last moment,” he says, “anything is possible.”