Joshua Coffin discouraged his young son from fantasizing about what was behind the clouds on Rustum! And Coffin expects Jan Svoboda, philosophically a "Constitutionalist," to agree with him on the ground that fantasy is untruthful. Theron Wolfe, also a Constitutionalist, had, in part one, 2, described his world-view as:
"'...an ideal of seeing the world as it is and behaving accordingly.'" (p. 19)
- adding:
"'I prefer to inhabit the objective universe.'" (ibid.)
However, Svoboda quite correctly replies to Coffin that:
"'Anker never said fun and fantasy were untruthful...'" (p. 122)
Not only did the philosopher, Torvald Anker, have more sense than to say that fantasy should be discouraged but also, more importantly, if he had said it, then he would have been wrong. Does Coffin prevent his son from hearing stories or reading fiction?
Intelligent beings whose libraries contained only history and science with no myths, fairy stories or fiction might even be impossible and certainly would not be human. Every positive proposition, e.g., "The sky is blue," entails many negative propositions, e.g., "The sky is not red, green etc," which imply questions like: "Why not?" and "What if it were?" People had to tell stories, e.g., about gods throwing thunderbolts, as the earliest attempt to account for aspects of their environment and experiences. Coffin reads the Bible and must surely realize that the creation stories are myths while the books of Ruth, Job and Jonah are historical fictions addressing moral questions.
A childish story that monsters lurk behind the Rustumite clouds would express the truthful warning that it is dangerous to wander out of sight of the colonized area. A child with a high IQ, like Dan Coffin, would begin by making stories but would soon learn to differentiate fact from fiction.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
We should not be TOO hard on Joshua Coffin. He was, after all, a strong, able, highly intelligent man himself. Unfortunately, he adhered to one of the stricter, more austere varieties of Protestantism, suspicious of fantasy.
But even Joshua Coffin had his gentler moments. Recall, after young Daniel was lost and then found, his did not upbraid him but made Daniel hot chocolate and told him stories about King Arthur.
As a Catholic I would insist on saying the Creation accounts in Genesis teach us theological truths about God, the universe, mankind, etc., under the forms of revised legends and myths taken by the inspired authors from Mesopotamian sources. I do agree with what you said about the books of Job, Jonah, and Ruth.
Sean
Puritans do have problems with the concept of the "conditional hypothetical" and in understanding the difference between fiction and lies. (Which is that lies intend to deceive, and fiction does not.)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That does make clearer what I was trying to say: puritanical Protestants tend to have problems with concepts like the "conditional hypothetical and in grasping the difference between a fiction and a lie. The former intends no deceit, the latter does.
Two real world examples might be how some puritanical types react with hostility to THE LORD OF THE RINGS and the Harry Potter books. Because of how these books use "magic." They might be having trouble grasping these are FICTIONS.
Sean
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