Le Guin on Rushdie and religion 1 Apr 2008 David Williams sent me this snippet of Ursula Le Guins’ review of Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence: A Novel: Some boast that science has ousted the incomprehensible; others cry that science has driven magic out of the world and plead for “re-enchantment”. But it’s clear that Charles Darwin lived in as wondrous a world, as full of discoveries, amazements and profound mysteries, as that of any fantasist. The people who disenchant the world are not the scientists, but those who see it as meaningless in itself, a machine operated by a deity. Science and literary fantasy would seem to be intellectually incompatible, yet both describe the world; the imagination functions actively in both modes, seeking meaning, and wins intellectual consent through strict attention to detail and coherence of thought, whether one is describing a beetle or an enchantress. Religion, which prescribes and proscribes, is irreconcilable with both of them, and since it demands belief, must shun their common ground, imagination. So the true believer must condemn both Darwin and Rushdie as “disobedient, irreverent, iconoclastic” dissidents from revealed truth. Evolution Sermon
Biology The difference between philosophy and biology 6 Jun 2010 Robert Paul Wolf continues his fascinating, and dare I say name-naming and body-locating, autobiobiographical memoirs of the academy and his place in it. In the latest episode he mentions Ed Wilson, the famous ant specialist, sociobiologist, and promoter of science. Brian Leiter cites the passage in which Wolf has a… Read More
Evolution When academics attack 5 Dec 2007 I love a good academic stoush, so long as I’m just watching and not involved either as an antagonist or as collateral damage. Recently, Steven Pinker published a book, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, which was subsequently reviewed by Patricia Churchland, in Nature. Unfortunately,… Read More
Evolution The origins of agriculture now extended 28 Sep 200818 Sep 2017 Readers know I think religion is post-agricultural, which raises some difficulties if we find evidence of organised religious behaviours before the onset of agriculture. The case in point here being Göbeli Tepe. Now a recent model of the process of cereal domestication has set back the beginnings of agriculture some… Read More
It takes a writer…. How wonderful to recognize the common ground of curiosity and imagination between science and fantasy, and to recognize also how invidious a doctrinaire religion (or to be fair, any dogmatic belief that excludes the quest for further knowledge) is to these.
Small wonder that many of us geeks are both scientists and fans of fantasy and science fiction. That also explains the hatred of fundamentalists towards science and Harry Potter (they aren’t likely to be exposed to a better quality of fantasy, or SF).
Small wonder that many of us geeks are both scientists and fans of fantasy and science fiction. That also explains the hatred of fundamentalists towards science and Harry Potter (they aren’t likely to be exposed to a better quality of fantasy, or SF).
Ursula Le Guins deserves to be in the same class as Zelazny(? spelling) Clark, Bradbury, and Asimov. I love her sense of fantasy and her intelligence, but most of all, her understanding of human beings and her talent for story telling.
Ursula Le Guins deserves to be in the same class as Zelazny(? spelling) Clark, Bradbury, and Asimov. I love her sense of fantasy and her intelligence, but most of all, her understanding of human beings and her talent for story telling.
Religion, which prescribes and proscribes, is irreconcilable with both of them, and since it demands belief, must shun their common ground, imagination. This is false, at least in the sense that religion eschews imagination. Faith requires an element of human fantasy. What religion tends to proscribe is the use of imagination along independent lines.
Religion, which prescribes and proscribes, is irreconcilable with both of them, and since it demands belief, must shun their common ground, imagination. This is false, at least in the sense that religion eschews imagination. Faith requires an element of human fantasy. What religion tends to proscribe is the use of imagination along independent lines.
Yeah, Ursula K. Le Guin demonstrates degrees of insight that I admire. To me she seems not just smart, but wise. Tim, have you read Le Guin’s relatively recent book, Changing Planes? Her talent for telling stories that demonstrate a deep understanding of human beings really shines in that one, I thought. Cheers