Well, you've read my book, so you know my thinking on this matter.
Scientific thinking is objective, and I suppose we could call it universal, in that the facts are the facts and they don't change from one person to the next. Mythic thinking is subjective, and personal -- yes, it can be shared with like-minded people, but it remains a subjective response.
Neither is "better" than the other -- they just happen to be two ways we think about things.
I suppose what Dawkins is railing about has to be with what could be considered "objective thinking about unreal and non-existant things". For instance - "Flubber doesn't exist. How can you behave as if it did?" Of course, he'd be substituting "flubber" with other things that may or may not exist, but which cannot currently be verified by scientific means.
But most fantasy is written by writers who would say "I know flubber doesn't exist. So? Wouldn't it be interesting and fun if it did? And if it did, this is the story I would write about it."
Of course, since I do happen to believe in the supernatural, or rather, a spiritual dimension that (at present) cannot be instrumentally measured objectively, I'm more in line with you. Fantasy isn't about scientific thinking. But I certainly agree with you that the Harry Potter books are mostly about a magic that is very "objective". It handles the supernatural itself very gingerly - consider Nearly-Headless Nick on the matter of death: he doesn't know for sure anything about what is "beyond".
Trying to force people into only one way of thinking is a big mistake, I think. In either direction. We need both ways of responding to the world.
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Date: 2008-11-01 11:44 pm (UTC)Scientific thinking is objective, and I suppose we could call it universal, in that the facts are the facts and they don't change from one person to the next. Mythic thinking is subjective, and personal -- yes, it can be shared with like-minded people, but it remains a subjective response.
Neither is "better" than the other -- they just happen to be two ways we think about things.
I suppose what Dawkins is railing about has to be with what could be considered "objective thinking about unreal and non-existant things". For instance - "Flubber doesn't exist. How can you behave as if it did?" Of course, he'd be substituting "flubber" with other things that may or may not exist, but which cannot currently be verified by scientific means.
But most fantasy is written by writers who would say "I know flubber doesn't exist. So? Wouldn't it be interesting and fun if it did? And if it did, this is the story I would write about it."
Of course, since I do happen to believe in the supernatural, or rather, a spiritual dimension that (at present) cannot be instrumentally measured objectively, I'm more in line with you. Fantasy isn't about scientific thinking. But I certainly agree with you that the Harry Potter books are mostly about a magic that is very "objective". It handles the supernatural itself very gingerly - consider Nearly-Headless Nick on the matter of death: he doesn't know for sure anything about what is "beyond".
Trying to force people into only one way of thinking is a big mistake, I think. In either direction. We need both ways of responding to the world.