![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Coincidences
Dec. 2nd, 2002 11:34 pmAd Mundo Exteriore,
I'd just like to say that reading Possession is really creepy. First of all, I find that one of my favorite unfinished CCS fanfics seems to be inspired by parts of it, especially the first and last chapters, I believe. Then, today, in AP French class, Mme Lewis announces, "Nous allons lire une histoire courte. C'est une conte de fée, au sujet de la fée Melusine." (Okay, so that was a paraphrase, not a quote, but details, details...) -_- One of the Victorian poets (who, I believe, does not actually exist) in Possession is primarily known for her epic poem on the Fairy Melusine. Is this bizarre or what?!
Of course, realizing that Possession was turned into a romantic movie with Gwyneth Paltrow, just the type of movie that my French teacher would tend to go to (at least from what I can tell of her personality), we could explain the coincidence by suggesting perhaps that she watched the movie then read the book then was inspired to go look for the fairy tale? But does this really hold up against Occam's Razor? Logical, but does it fit the circumstances? After all, she may have been using this story for years. (L.D., kaydee, did you read this fairy tale in French IV?) Maybe she read the book earlier? In any case, I think the actual simplest explanation is pure chance. (Isn't it always?) Of course, then we have to discuss what my definition of "simple" is...
What definitely does not hold up against Occam's Razor is the idea that the universe actually reacts to the growth of my mind and changes the environment around me in response to what I am thinking about. If you ponder that particular paranoid fantasy for a while, you'll see that it grows out of a tendency towards superstition, which is strange for someone who claims to have devoted her life for science, but exists nevertheless. I've inherited it from chère Maman who is fascinated by science but doesn't really have an innate logical sense for it, if you know what I mean. Thus, she mixes up her wonder at the strange natural forces in the world with her wonder at the presumed unnatural forces as well...from the point of a lay person, both science and superstition can seem equally marvelous and outrageous. After all, do consider all the quack alternative medicines that continue to survive due to the pseudoscientific language that fools most poor gullibles who haven't mastered anything beyond the most shallow level of scientific understanding.
Now, due to Mother's taste for the mysterious, I've also a tendency to indulge these fantastic whims, believing that yes, the outside world does somehow arrange itself to mirror my inner life. For a long time, I believed that if I willed it with sufficient determination, I could control the way that the wind blowed. And while one part of my brain screams, "Irrational!" I'm rather reluctant to let go of this tendency, since it allows me to half-believe in a interesting world. In some ways, the ability to entertain what on first glance appears to be ridiculous should actually help me in scientific research, because face it, if it was all about logic and analysis, no one would achieve any breakthroughs. Creativity is just as necessary in science as it is in art, sometimes more necessary, since artists are usually creative to begin with, while many scientists are not. So what creativity can be inspired must be cultivated.
Whew, that was long. Oh, by the way, not that any of you cared, but I managed to find answers to the problem that was troubling me on my math homework. (Thanks to Annie whose cousin is a math major and proved that question for her. She let me copy after she got the fax. It was remarkably, elegantly, beautifully simple. I hate myself sometimes.) Anyway, the irony is that I'll probably get all the other questions wrong, except for that particular one, which I didn't do myself. (Oh, and if you're troubled at my lack of academic integrity, collaboration is allowed on all homeworks for the class.)
...Tari
I'd just like to say that reading Possession is really creepy. First of all, I find that one of my favorite unfinished CCS fanfics seems to be inspired by parts of it, especially the first and last chapters, I believe. Then, today, in AP French class, Mme Lewis announces, "Nous allons lire une histoire courte. C'est une conte de fée, au sujet de la fée Melusine." (Okay, so that was a paraphrase, not a quote, but details, details...) -_- One of the Victorian poets (who, I believe, does not actually exist) in Possession is primarily known for her epic poem on the Fairy Melusine. Is this bizarre or what?!
Of course, realizing that Possession was turned into a romantic movie with Gwyneth Paltrow, just the type of movie that my French teacher would tend to go to (at least from what I can tell of her personality), we could explain the coincidence by suggesting perhaps that she watched the movie then read the book then was inspired to go look for the fairy tale? But does this really hold up against Occam's Razor? Logical, but does it fit the circumstances? After all, she may have been using this story for years. (L.D., kaydee, did you read this fairy tale in French IV?) Maybe she read the book earlier? In any case, I think the actual simplest explanation is pure chance. (Isn't it always?) Of course, then we have to discuss what my definition of "simple" is...
What definitely does not hold up against Occam's Razor is the idea that the universe actually reacts to the growth of my mind and changes the environment around me in response to what I am thinking about. If you ponder that particular paranoid fantasy for a while, you'll see that it grows out of a tendency towards superstition, which is strange for someone who claims to have devoted her life for science, but exists nevertheless. I've inherited it from chère Maman who is fascinated by science but doesn't really have an innate logical sense for it, if you know what I mean. Thus, she mixes up her wonder at the strange natural forces in the world with her wonder at the presumed unnatural forces as well...from the point of a lay person, both science and superstition can seem equally marvelous and outrageous. After all, do consider all the quack alternative medicines that continue to survive due to the pseudoscientific language that fools most poor gullibles who haven't mastered anything beyond the most shallow level of scientific understanding.
Now, due to Mother's taste for the mysterious, I've also a tendency to indulge these fantastic whims, believing that yes, the outside world does somehow arrange itself to mirror my inner life. For a long time, I believed that if I willed it with sufficient determination, I could control the way that the wind blowed. And while one part of my brain screams, "Irrational!" I'm rather reluctant to let go of this tendency, since it allows me to half-believe in a interesting world. In some ways, the ability to entertain what on first glance appears to be ridiculous should actually help me in scientific research, because face it, if it was all about logic and analysis, no one would achieve any breakthroughs. Creativity is just as necessary in science as it is in art, sometimes more necessary, since artists are usually creative to begin with, while many scientists are not. So what creativity can be inspired must be cultivated.
Whew, that was long. Oh, by the way, not that any of you cared, but I managed to find answers to the problem that was troubling me on my math homework. (Thanks to Annie whose cousin is a math major and proved that question for her. She let me copy after she got the fax. It was remarkably, elegantly, beautifully simple. I hate myself sometimes.) Anyway, the irony is that I'll probably get all the other questions wrong, except for that particular one, which I didn't do myself. (Oh, and if you're troubled at my lack of academic integrity, collaboration is allowed on all homeworks for the class.)
...Tari
