Dragonfly on final approach

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

There really is nothing to fear in fantasy unless you are afraid of the uncertainty.  This is why it’s hard for me to imagine that anyone who likes science can dislike fantasy.  Both are based so profoundly on the admission of uncertainty, the welcoming acceptance of unanswered questions.  Of course, the scientist seeks to ask how things are the way they are, not to imagine how they might be otherwise.  But are the two operations opposed, or related?  We can’t question reality directly, only by questioning our conventions, our belief, our orthodoxy, our construction of reality.  All Galileo said, all Darwin said, was, “It doesn’t have to be the way we thought it was.”       

Ursula K. Le Guin in No Time to Spare:  Thinking About What Matters

Comments are welcome!