[Xmca-l] Re: The history of science fiction and imagined worlds

[Douglas Williams]

Hi--

I may have missed a response (I'm speed-reading as I am poaching time from work), but I just wanted to add a second to Tom's comment here. Religions are all about possible worlds, in dystopic or utopic forms, and about ways of getting there, which, if they often resort to deus ex machina means, also implicitly postulate possible actions to bring or to avoid about such worlds. Similarly, Plato's Republic is a possible world. More's Utopia is a possible world. The act of re-imagining what is and what has been into new ideas of what could be--that tertiary place that Morse Peckham (Man's Rage for Chaos) and Marx Wartofsky (Models) talk about--or even what could never be, yet could influence the tyranny of present reality, is perhaps the last refuge of the uniquely human differences between us and other creatures. 

But time for me to post my other note, and stop stealing time from the present....

Doug



________________________________
 From: Tom Richardson <tom.richardson3@googlemail.com>
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu> 
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 2:04 AM
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: The history of science fiction and imagined worlds
 

Hi Greg
Thanks for this - entertaining!

But why doesn't Michael S. go right back to all religious belief - surely
Christians are just such 'geeks', long before Sherlock H. 'believers'?
Tom
Middlesbrough UK




On 23 September 2014 15:37, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com> wrote:

> Apologies for distracting from the "real world" discussions on the other
> thread, but I came across this Ted talk and thought that others might be
> interested in the history and role of imagined worlds in politics:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUtErxgz7Mo
>
> But perhaps it is worth tracing otherworlds and "the otherwise" to works
> such as those of Jonathan Swift, Laurence Sterne, and Rabelais.
>
> Seems like imagining other worlds has always been a deeply political act.
>
> -greg
>
> --
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 882 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>