As recent posts demonstrate, discussion of Poul Anderson's works is a perfect opportunity to discuss the works of many other imaginative authors, too many to list yet again.
Rational beings without imagination, their libraries containing nothing but historical and scientific text books, are probably impossible but in any case would not be human beings. Also, if the content of our myths, legends, literature and fiction had differed from the beginning - different gods, heroes, villains etc - then we would not be who and what we are now.
We create fictional characters but they make us, like Escher's drawing of two hands that draw each other. We should be grateful for and to Nicholas van Rijn, larger than life hero or villain.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Would it even be possible for any intelligent race to have no imagination, no faiths, philosophies, flights of fancy, etc.? I have my doubts that such a species could even exist!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
No. It is impossible. Scientific theory requires imagination. Any positive proposition like "The sky is blue" entails negatives: "It is not red etc." That leads to questions like "Why is it blue? What if it were another color?" Fiction is implicit.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Exactly! It would be like trying to imagine raccoons evolving to become intelligent BUT without imagination. No, not possible.
I think even dogs and cats have more imagination than this hypothetical "intelligent" race without imagination.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment