Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Universe 'too queer' to grasp

"Each species, in fact, has a different 'reality'. They work with different 'software' to make them feel comfortable, [Dawkins] suggested.

"Because different species live in different models of the world, there was a discomfiting variety of real worlds, he suggested.

"'Middle world is like the narrow range of the electromagnetic spectrum that we see,' he said."

Dawkins is right, of course. But I can't help recoiling at the irony of a mainstream skeptic basically reciting ufologist/occultist John Keel . . .

5 comments:

W.M. Bear said...

Does this mean God is gay?

Mac said...

Ah! Someone *finally* bit on the "queer" bit!

razorsmile said...

"too queer to grasp"?

What an utterly useless point of view.

W.M. Bear said...

Ah! Someone *finally* bit on the "queer" bit!

I resisted the temptation for several days. I think it must be a Brit thing to be insensitive to the sleazier connotations of the word "queer." In fact, I often see the word used with a perfectly straight face in British publications (of which "New Scientist" is one). So I'm guessing it's purely American slang.

What an utterly useless point of view.

Especially when you realize that this doesn't keep scientists like Dawkins himself from trying to grasp the universe, which is, in fact, what the scientific enterprise is all about. Personally, it strikes me as one of those things celebrity scientists say when they're trying to sound "philosophical." I.e., it doesn't necessarily really MEAN anything! (It just SOUNDS "profound" -- until you start thinking about it, of course.)

W.M. Bear said...

BTW, Dawkin's pronouncement also sounds like a riff on Sir James Jeans' famous 1930's observation that, "The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we CAN imagine." (Note, too, Sir James' opting for the word "strange"!)