My favorite aspect of Escher's art is seen in Belvedere, Ascending and Descending, and Waterfall. I love how it ties in with arguments about the Coherence The

My favorite aspect of Escher's art is seen in Belvedere, Ascending and Descending, and Waterfall. I love how it ties in with arguments about the Coherence Theory of Truth: Consider two propositions which do not belong to a specified set. These propositions could both be consistent with a specified set and yet be inconsistent with each other. If coherence is consistency, the coherence theorist would have to claim that both propositions are true, but this is impossible.[1] There's an analogy to Escher's art. When viewing those three images (and a few others) though a restrictive hole, Every possible circle viewable through the paper is drawn to be physically coherent! But of course we know that the systems in his prints are inconsistent. When looking at an entire system through a keyhole (the way we edit code bases), it's possible that what we see at every possible view may well be coherent, and yet the entire system may still not be consistent. [1] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-coherence/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-coherence/