Möbius strip

Pickering’s discussions on blurring the separate ‘units of analysis’ from the binaries of Hard Science and Soft Science reminded me of a Möbius Strip wherein two apparently different ‘sides’, the front and the back of the strip, become joined in a continuous circular and singular boundary. I thought that this joining of ‘sides’ reflected a premise of unity. However, the analogy does not reflect the ‘seeing double’ p.31 notion which Pickering talks about, but, on closer inspection of the properties of a Möbius Strip, if it split down the middle the ‘sides’ reappear but are still joined at the ends, and added to that there are twists.

 “Cutting a Möbius strip along the center line with a pair of scissors yields one long strip with two full twists in it, rather than two separate strips; the result is not a Möbius strip. This happens because the original strip only has one edge that is twice as long as the original strip. Cutting creates a second independent edge, half of which was on each side of the scissors. Cutting this new, longer, strip down the middle creates two strips wound around each other, each with two full twists.”