{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1901",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1901,
    "subject": "(no subject)",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-11-02T15:08:16+00:00",
    "last": "1999-11-02T15:08:16+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0347@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Greene, Carlton",
        "address": "cgreene2 at hunton.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-11-02T15:08:16+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Daniel Fusch wrote:\n\nThere is a technological level, a metaphorical level, a \nmythological level, and a spiritual level to all these things. I think what \nwhoever-started-this was trying to point out was that the symbolic level of \nanalysis is more important (or higher, to use a Miltonic concept) than the \nscientific level or analysis. In other words, it is more important that the \nreader understand what Typhon is doing on a symbolic level than it is for \nthe reader to understand the anatomical knowledge that went into putting \nTyphon together.\n\nI agree with you.  My point is simply that we should not cease seeking\ntechnological explanations for the wonders in TBOTNS simply because the\nmetaphorical associations they create are more important than the physical\nwonders themselves.  This is because the consideration of possible\ntechnological explanations for these events enhances the power of their\ncorresponding metaphorical associations.\n\nFollowing your Typhon's head example -- if there was no convincing\nscientific explanation for Typhon's surgery (\"and the magic man decided he\nneeded a second head, and poof!  He had one!\"), then Typhon's story becomes\na arbitrary, transparent fairy tale vehicle designed simply to get across\nthe *moral of the story*.  In contrast, by suggesting that Typhon's\naquisition of a second head is an explainable scientific event bounded by\nphysical laws, Wolfe creates a very powerful association between the\nexplainable physical world and the divine not present in fairy tales (or\nscience fiction of the Arthur C. Clarke variety, for that matter).\n\nC/"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}