Saturday, 16 May 2020

Knowing The World

Operation Chaos, XV.

"You don't really know the world till you've explored it with animal as well as human senses..." (p. 101)

A werewolf would say that. However, since we cannot explore the world both ways, it remains the case that we know the world one way and wolves know it another way. But it is important to remember that our sensory apparatus is just one of many. We say that there are many books in a library whereas an intelligent, paper-eating insect would say that there is a lot of food and would not call the building a library. Human beings can at least try to imagine other perceptions as when Poul Anderson writes Matuchek's account of werewolf perceptions. See here.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And in "Nightpiece" Anderson strove to give us some idea of what kind of non-human intelligent race to have co-evolved alongside our species on Earth. And that was one of the toughest to understand stories he wrote. To say nothing of my article about "Nightpiece" being VERY hard to write!

Ad astra! Sean