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Popular science can say some pretty wild things, these days, but the supernatural is still out, as is Lamarck. You can have an many dimensions as you want, so long as none of them contains ghosts, telepathy, anything that fucks with Charles Darwin, or anything that Hitler liked (apart from Charles Darwin)."
Scarlett Thomas, The end of Mr Y, Ch.2.
Addendum: I was remiss, I realise in retrospect, in not making clear that
- I quoted this because it makes me laugh, not becuse I think it says anything I particularly agree or disagree with.
- It is the words of a character in a novel, not the author of that novel
I may take this post down in time, and put up instead another on both novel and author.
1 comment:
"Popular science can say some pretty wild things, these days, but the supernatural is still out, as is Lamarck. You can have an many dimensions as you want, so long as none of them contains ghosts, telepathy, anything that fucks with Charles Darwin, or anything that Hitler liked (apart from Charles Darwin).
So what's her point? She's conflating the unprovable/unfalsiable (like ghosts/supernatural) with genuine scientific hypotheses (like higher dimensions) with disproved science (like Lamarckism) with the politically unfashionable (whether good science or not).
Is there any actual coherent argument in there?
Just Googled. "Scarlett Thomas ... degree in Cultural Studies". WTF should we care what some uninformed arts grad thinks about science?
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