{"id":416,"date":"2008-10-27T12:06:01","date_gmt":"2008-10-27T12:06:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2008\/10\/27\/dreams\/"},"modified":"2008-10-27T12:06:01","modified_gmt":"2008-10-27T12:06:01","slug":"dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2008\/10\/27\/dreams\/","title":{"rendered":"Dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m about to go to bed, so don&#8217;t have time to do <a href=\"http:\/\/network.nature.com\/people\/brianclegg\/blog\/2008\/10\/27\/is-maxine-about-to-join-henry\">this<\/a> justice (the entry I <em>want<\/em> to write has been lurking on my desk for about three weeks. Soon, I&#8217;ll nail it down).<\/p>\n<p>\nHowever, it strikes me that, if Dawkins is being quoted correctly, then he has lost all sense of what it means to be a scientist.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n<em>the fact that so many of the stories I read allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes, whether that has a sort of insidious affect on rationality, I\u2019m not sure<\/em>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\nScientists observe, they think of a hypothesis, they test it.<\/p>\n<p>\nThat second step is crucial. If you have no imagination, if you bring all your pre-conceived ideas to the world you observe: well, you might publish lots of papers, you might write popular science books, you might even win a Nobel or get knighted, but basically, you&#8217;re a dolt.<\/p>\n<p>\nScience consists in observing the world, and answering, but first asking, the question &#8220;How does that happen?&#8221; You need imagination to ask the question, imagination to answer it: a child-like sense of wonder in all you see and hear and feel. (Forget for a moment that children do develop a very real sense of reality).<\/p>\n<p>\nCan a frog turn into a prince? Well, you know what, I&#8217;ve never seen it happen. But why don&#8217;t we think of an experiment to <em>find out<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>\nTo say &#8220;No, that can&#8217;t happen, <em>because I say so<\/em>&#8221; is to murder a very human part of ourselves. And <em>that&#8217;s<\/em> child abuse, in my book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m about to go to bed, so don&#8217;t have time to do this justice (the entry I want to write has been lurking on my desk for about three weeks. Soon, I&#8217;ll nail it down). However, it strikes me that, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2008\/10\/27\/dreams\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}