[OPE] Arthur C. Clarke dies in Sri Lanka: a generation of science fiction writers is vanishing

From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@tiscali.nl)
Date: Mon Mar 24 2008 - 10:19:28 EDT


In general, I think it is behaviourally preferable to underestimate the pace of technological change than overestimate it - you get more pleasant surprises than unpleasant surprises - but of course it is more preferable to estimate capitalist progress correctly. 

Clarke taught us that if we do not go boldly where none have gone before, it's because we fail to think the possibilities, our creativity is imprisoned in rather tight confines - but why? 

To enlarge the spectrum of possibilities requires imagination, i.e. the discovery of phenomena which exist not simply because they are really there, but because my own gnosis recognises those phenomena and helps to bring them into being, so that I realize my idea. 

The calculating intellect can calculate only on the basis of fixed distinctions defining what is to be counted or discounted, but in the imagination there are no fixed distinctions, and in this sense the mind is freed and can make all kinds of new connections which escape the calculating intellect, or at any rate reframe the fixed distinctions in a new way.

Jurriaan 




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