note Re: Short Sun blog

David Stockhoff · 29 Sep 2010, 11:40 · from 2010-September.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2010 07:40:41 -0400
Subject: (urth) note Re: Short Sun blog
In-Reply-To: <4CA2D83A.5060307 at io.com>
References: <SNT123-W153305E50B51F723CAF3A2CF670 at phx.gbl>
	<4CA2D83A.5060307 at io.com>
Message-ID: <4CA325B9.1060504 at verizon.net>

  It seems to me that the whole idea of TBotNS is that there is a lot 
going on in the universe that seems supernatural but isn't. So this is 
an important point.

But another idea of TBotNS is that you (we) can't necessarily tell when 
you (and Severian) have encountered the single needle in the haystack 
that truly is. And Severian is a creature of the Yesodi "Wizards of Oz."

So can we ever really tell whether the Conciliator's miracles are 
supernatural or not?

On 9/29/2010 2:10 AM, Jeff Wilson wrote:
> On 9/28/2010 10:13 PM, Lee Berman wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Roy C. Lackey- That power, and the power to bring the dead back to 
>>> life, was a supernatural power.
>>
>>> Jeff Wilson- Of course it's supernatural
>>
>>
>> Supernatural only to 21st century primitives who managed to use their 
>> puny millenium or two of
>> scientific study to advance their understanding of the universe past 
>> alchemy, phlogiston and
>> luminiferous aether to their quasi-religious beliefs in "entropy" and 
>> "conservation of mass-energy"
>>
>> We of Urth's First Empire have 30,000 more years of science at our 
>> disposal and thus have over 15x more
>> advanced knowledge of the universe and its possibilities. Yet we 
>> should not debase ourselves with hubris
>> and should  decline to snicker at the neo-Neanderthals who struggled 
>> desperately with their simple
>> Einsteinian-Planckian-Hawkingsian knowledge of physics and felt they 
>> had it all figured out, even as they
>> needed a supreme effort just to travel to Lune. ;- )
>
> The only problem with that is it would make the First Imperials more 
> transcendent than the Yesodis. I also find it funny that trillions of 
> people on millions of worlds progress at the same rate as we poor 
> benighted earthlings paddling around the kiddie pool of the universe.
>

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