David Williams sent me this snippet of Ursula Le Guins' review of Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence: A Novel:
Some boast that science has ousted the incomprehensible; others cry that science has driven magic out of the world and plead for "re-enchantment". But it's clear that Charles Darwin lived in as wondrous a world, as full of discoveries, amazements and profound mysteries, as that of any fantasist. The people who disenchant the world are not the scientists, but those who see it as meaningless in itself, a machine operated by a deity. Science and literary fantasy would seem to be intellectually incompatible, yet both describe the world; the imagination functions actively in both modes, seeking meaning, and wins intellectual consent through strict attention to detail and coherence of thought, whether one is describing a beetle or an enchantress. Religion, which prescribes and proscribes, is irreconcilable with both of them, and since it demands belief, must shun their common ground, imagination. So the true believer must condemn both Darwin and Rushdie as "disobedient, irreverent, iconoclastic" dissidents from revealed truth.
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Comments
It takes a writer....
How wonderful to recognize the common ground of curiosity and imagination between science and fantasy, and to recognize also how invidious a doctrinaire religion (or to be fair, any dogmatic belief that excludes the quest for further knowledge) is to these.
Posted by: Jud | April 1, 2008 10:59 AM
Small wonder that many of us geeks are both scientists and fans of fantasy and science fiction.
That also explains the hatred of fundamentalists towards science and Harry Potter (they aren't likely to be exposed to a better quality of fantasy, or SF).
Posted by: Ribozyme | April 1, 2008 5:32 PM
Hey, neat. Good for Le Guin.
Posted by: Russell Blackford | April 2, 2008 12:54 AM
Ursula Le Guins deserves to be in the same class as Zelazny(? spelling) Clark, Bradbury, and Asimov. I love her sense of fantasy and her intelligence, but most of all, her understanding of human beings and her talent for story telling.
Posted by: Tim | April 2, 2008 1:27 AM
Religion, which prescribes and proscribes, is irreconcilable with both of them, and since it demands belief, must shun their common ground, imagination.
This is false, at least in the sense that religion eschews imagination. Faith requires an element of human fantasy. What religion tends to proscribe is the use of imagination along independent lines.
Posted by: Scott Hatfield, OM | April 2, 2008 10:00 AM
Yeah, Ursula K. Le Guin demonstrates degrees of insight that I admire. To me she seems not just smart, but wise.
Tim, have you read Le Guin's relatively recent book, Changing Planes?
Her talent for telling stories that demonstrate a deep understanding of human beings really shines in that one, I thought.
Cheers
Posted by: etbnc | April 2, 2008 10:42 AM