Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Fantasy intersects real world


I say this as an engineer first. As I have explained before, to be an engineer one must begin with the position of the argument and then find the facts that fit it. When the discovered facts do not fit the argument, one knows there is something wrong with the facts. One then needs to go out and get new facts that work. If this proves impossible, one may be forced to modify the original position of the argument with the sure knowledge that the new argument was actually the old argument all along, only remembered incorrectly by everyone else.

This is science: the truth is only what we believe it to be. Life is merely a question of ignoring those facts that do not support your viewpoint.

(From Book One of The Bronze Canticles.)


I don't know if fantasy authors Tracy and Laura Hickman were commenting on current affairs when they wrote this, but it feels that way.

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