The test of fairyland [is that] you cannot imagine two and one not making three but you can easily imagine trees not growing fruit; you can imagine them growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging on by the tail.
The quotation, from G.K. Chesterton, is from an interesting article by Bernard Manzo in the Times Literary Supplement of June 10, 2011 (he didn’t give the source in Chesterton’s writings). It got me to thinking about how imaginative literature, from folktale to fantasy, operates, and to wondering about its relationship to science, though I’ll only get to that at the very end of this piece.
The fantastic tale may suspend the laws of physics — carpets fly; cats fade into invisibility leaving only a smile — and of probability — the youngest of three brothers always wins the bride; the infant in the box cast upon the waters survives unharmed — but it carries its revolt against reality no further. Mathematical order is unquestioned. Two and one make three, in Koshchei’s castle and Alice’s Wonderland (especially in Wonderland). Euclid’s geometry — or possibly Riemann’s —somebody’s geometry, anyhow — governs the layout. Otherwise incoherence would invade and paralyse the narrative.
There lies the main difference between childish imaginings and imaginative literature. The child “telling a story” roams about among the imaginary and the half-understood without knowing the difference, content with the sound of language and the pure play of fantasy with no particular end, and that’s the charm of it. But fantasies, whether folktales or sophisticated literature, are stories in the adult, demanding sense. They can ignore certain laws of physics, but not of causality. They start here and go there (or back here), and though the mode of travel may be unusual, and here and there may be wildly exotic and unfamiliar places, yet they must have both a location on the map of that world and a relationship to the map of our world. If not, the hearer or reader of the tale will be set adrift in a sea of inconsequential inconsistencies, or worse yet, left drowning in the shallow puddle of the author’s wishful thinking.
It doesn’t have to be the way it is. That is what fantasy says. It doesn’t say, “Anything goes” — that’s irresponsibility, when two and one make five, or forty-seven, or whuddevva, and the story doesn’t “add up,” as we say. Fantasy doesn’t say, “Nothing is” — that’s nihilism. And it doesn’t say, “It ought to be this way” — that’s utopianism, a different enterprise. Fantasy isn’t meliorative. The happy ending, however enjoyable to the reader, applies to the characters only; this is fiction, not prediction and not prescription.
It doesn’t have to be the way it is is a playful statement, made in the context of fiction, with no claim to “being real.” Yet it is a subversive statement.
Subversion doesn’t suit people who, feeling their adjustment to life has been successful, want things to go on just as they are, or people who need support from authority assuring them that things are as they have to be. Fantasy not only asks “What if things didn’t go on just as they do?” but demonstrates what they might be like if they went otherwise — thus gnawing at the very foundation of the belief that things have to be the way they are.
So here imagination and fundamentalism come into conflict.
A fully created imaginary world is a mental construct similar in many respects to a religious or other cosmology. This similarity, if noticed, can be deeply disturbing to the orthodox mind.
When a fundamental belief is threatened the response is likely to be angry or dismissive — either “Abomination!” or “Nonsense!” Fantasy gets the abomination treatment from religious fundamentalists, whose rigid reality-constructs shudder at contact with question, and the nonsense treatment from pragmatic fundamentalists, who want to restrict reality to the immediately perceptible and the immediately profitable. All fundamentalisms set strict limits to the uses of imagination, outside which the fundamentalist’s imagination itself runs riot, fancying dreadful deserts where God and Reason and the capitalist way of life are lost, forests of the night where tigers hang from trees by the tail, lighting the way to madness with their bright burning.
Those who dismiss fantasy less fiercely, from a less absolutist stance, usually call it dreaming, or escapism.
Dream and fantastic literature are related only on a very deep, usually inaccessible level of the mind. Dream is free of intellectual control; its narratives are irrational and unstable, and its aesthetic value is mostly accidental. Fantastic literature, like all the verbal arts, must satisfy the intellectual as well as the aesthetic faculty. Fantasy, odd as it sounds to say so, is a perfectly rational undertaking.
As for the charge of escapism, what does “escape” mean? Escape from real life, responsibility, order, duty, piety, is what the charge implies. But nobody, except the most criminally irresponsible or pitifully incompetent, escapes to jail. The direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is “escapism” an accusation of?
***
“Why are things as they are? Must they be as they are? What might they be like if they were otherwise?” To ask these questions is to admit the contingency of reality, or at least to allow that our perception of reality may be incomplete, our interpretation of it arbitrary or mistaken.
I know that to philosophers what I’m saying is childishly naïve, but my mind cannot or will not follow philosophical argument, so I must remain naïve. To an ordinary mind not trained in philosophy, the question — do things have to be the way they are/the way they are here and now/the way I’ve been told they are? — may be an important one. To open a door that has been kept closed is an important act.
Upholders and defenders of a status quo, political, social, economic, religious, or literary, may denigrate or diabolize or dismiss imaginative literature, because it is — more than any other kind of writing — subversive by nature. It has proved, over many centuries, a useful instrument of resistance to oppression.
Yet, as Chesterton pointed out, fantasy stops short of nihilist violence, of destroying all the laws and burning all the boats. (Like Tolkien, Chesterton was an imaginative writer and a practicing Catholic, and thus perhaps particularly aware of tensions and boundaries.) — Two and one make three. Two of the brothers fail the quest, the third carries it through. Action is met with reaction. Fate, Luck, Necessity are as inexorable in Middle Earth as in Colonus or South Dakota. The fantasy tale begins here and ends there (or back here), where the subtle and ineluctable obligations and responsibilities of narrative art have taken it. Down on the bedrock, things are as they have to be. It’s only everywhere above the bedrock that nothing has to be the way it is.
There really is nothing to fear in fantasy unless you are afraid of the freedom of uncertainty. This is why it’s hard for me to imagine that anyone who likes science can dislike fantasy. Both are based so profoundly on the admission of uncertainty, the welcoming acceptance of unanswered questions. Of course the scientist seeks to ask how things are the way they are, not to imagine how they might be otherwise. But are the two operations opposed, or related? We can’t question reality directly, only by questioning our conventions, our belief, our orthodoxy, our construction of reality. All Galileo said, all Darwin said, was, “It doesn’t have to be the way we thought it was.”
–UKL
27 June 2011
____________________
Ursula K. Le Guin is a founding member of Book View Café.
My calligraphy teacher, Lloyd Reynolds, used to quote from a very old poem, that freedom is a noble thing because it “maketh a man to have liking,” that is the ability to prefer one thing over another, and by extension to discover and validate his capacity for wonder, for curiosity, for hope, and for joy. These are also the roots of imaginative literature.
A splendid defense of fantasy. Those who should read it won’t.
The Chesterton quote is from ORTHODOXY, the chapter on “The Ethics of Elfland.” http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Gilbert_K_Chesterton/Orthodoxy/index.html
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Most people don’t seem to understand that, when you live in a world where one plus two makes three, it also follows that carpets don’t fly and cats don’t fade away. You’re right, and Chesterton was right, to say that fantasy writers constrain themselves and only allow some things to vary from their natural pattern, and it is an interesting idea that children’s fantasies and grown-ups’ fantasies differ in this aspect only by degree. If you allow that, though, perhaps you could also allow that, for a scientist who sees clearly how the non-transparency of cats relates to the properties of their structure and constituents, all the way down through layers of biology and chemistry and physics to the fundamental laws of the universe, all such fantasies would seem equally childish. The visibility of cats is as much a part of the bedrock as the rules of arithmetic.
But where is the harm? Certainly not in uncertainty. As you rightly point out, uncertainty is the air that science breathes. In fact, most scientists I know love fantasy and have no problem with a brief suspension of disbelief (they have more trouble with the often right-wing or simplistic moralities so often embedded in the stories). However, there is a big difference between saying, “It doesn’t have to be the way it is for the sake of this story,” and , “It doesn’t have to be the way it is full stop.” The latter is the unfortunate way of thinking that allows people to say they don’t “believe” in climate change, as if it were an option. They “believe” in their satnav, they “believe” in their TV set, and don’t understand that the same chemistry and physics that makes them work, the same scientific method, the same mathematics that underpins their operation, is why scientists have concluded that we are causing global warming. It is similar in some ways to the idea that candlesticks could grow on trees; people accept part of the reality science reveals, but feel happy to dismiss other parts.
And that’s where the harm is. And that’s why this way of thinking does, sometimes, frighten me.
Thank-you, Ursula, from someone who discovered your Earthsea books as an adult and fell in love
.
One quibble, one observation -
Quibble: you mention the tension between fantasy and fundamentalist religion, but never quite get to the real conflict, which is that BOTH are fantasies and, like the arguments between Star Wars zealots and Star Trek fanatics, there is room for only one cosmology. (Religion and imagination have never gotten along because so far as religion is concerned, the fantasy has already been written and there will be no shared universes, no sequels and absolutely no fanfic.)
Observation: I see a dividing line between the acceptance of fantasy and the acceptance of (have to stick the qualifier in ‘good’) science fiction reflected in what you’ve written, though the equation is more along the lines of: fantasy: 2+1 can never equal 3; science fiction: 2+1 = 3, always, and btw, look what we might be able to do with pi.
My loss, but candlesticks growing on trees to me means there’s a gene engineer hanging around somewhere….
Interestingly, my experience of scientists is that many of them seem to also be fans of fantasy. Many of my friends who are professional scientists also happen to write or role-play for pleasure, and sci-fi/fantasy conventions that I’ve been to bring scientists and fantasy lovers together on regular occasions.
It seems to me that both science lovers and fantasy lovers struggle against a prevailing attitude that venerates wilfull ignorance and a prideful lack of imagination. The child who excels at their studies cares too much to be cool, and is a geek. The child who loves reading fantasy and structures make-believe into roleplay is too passionate about the wrong thing to be cool, and so is also geek. Both are outcast, and so the two geek cultures seem to have run away together, and now live in the same hiding-place.
It seems sometimes that the only scientists or fantasists who might have escaped that fate are the ones who have run away alone.
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Most people don’t seem to understand that, when you live in a world where one plus two makes three, it also follows that carpets don’t fly and cats don’t fade away.
No, it doesn’t.
If you allow that, though, perhaps you could also allow that, for a scientist who sees clearly how the non-transparency of cats relates to the properties of their structure and constituents, all the way down through layers of biology and chemistry and physics to the fundamental laws of the universe, all such fantasies would seem equally childish. The visibility of cats is as much a part of the bedrock as the rules of arithmetic.
Except that the fundamental laws of the universe are in the same boat as the flying carpet and the fading cat, but not the laws of mathematics it is not a logical impossibility for it not to be so. It is not some property of quarks that ensures that one plus two equals three.
On most of these points I agree with UKL. We can reasonably draw lines between the rules of math and the rules of physics, and our particular universe. And even, pace UKL and GKC, the rules of morality (which he classed with the rules of math, which was the point of the essay that quote comes from) may vary from one fictional universe to another.
Oh, wow. I LOVE this, especially the last paragraph. Thank you so much for formulating and sharing.
Brillliant! Beautiful! I love it!
The subtle allusion to Blake (speaking of imagination!), and the way UKL combined that with Chesterton’s quote made me smile.
Seems to me that one of the functions of fantasy is to broaden the possibilities of causality; like all fiction it offers more causality, traceable proof of how we got here, the why.
Fantasy also helps us map the causality of our emotional lives by clothing our emotions as the monsters they are.
I remember arguing with someone about whether the world is (roughly) a sphere. Apparently its shape being other than spherical wouldn’t affect their ability to fly to Australia by a Great Circle route. In their universe.
Some things you can’t make up.
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Absolutely! UKL gives a wonderful defence of Fantasy as a genre and state of mind – thinking ‘outside the box’, which is often the starting point of great scientific theories. Graham Storrs’ misgivings arise from the common mistake that fantastical equates with nonsensical. While it CAN, it often doesn’t… the best fantasy landscapes run along perfectly understandable rules – it’s just they happen to fall outside our perceived norms. And holding fantastic and science fiction responsible for people refusing to ‘believe’ in issues like global warming is a bit like condemning all religion because of a handful of murdering fanatics.
Nah, Graham Storrs doesn’t appear to have any prejudices about fantasy = nonsensical. His mistake was simply to confuse logical possibility with physical possibility, as Mary pointed out.
I think UKL quite clearly points out differences between science and fantasy (or, more generally, imaginative writing). What she suggests is that speculative, explorative. imaginative faculty of mind is crucial for both of them although in both cases it does not work well if it is not countered by some “reality check” (where “reality” may mean quite many different things depending on whether we discuss mathematical proof, physicist’s Gedankenexperiment, or a psychological novel). As a great German mathematician David Hilbert said: we are born with wide horizons but then they shrink and shrink, and finally we can only peek out through a single tiny hole. Then we call it our point of view. This is what we need speculative faculty of mind for – to prevent or at least slow down this scenario.
As for Graham Storrs’ comment, I share his worry about climate – actually, given the data we have now, clearly indicating that we emit lots of carbodioxide, that the levels of carbodioxide in the atmosphere are strongly rising since the Industrial Revolution started, and given our quite precise understanding of a way in which carbodioxide adds to the warmhouse effect, one would need a lot of imagination to argue that the climate warning is *not* related to human activity. But I would not blame imaginative thinking for that – even the most dumb and unimaginative people have enough brain to rationalize their wrong behaviour in order to make it seem glorious (at least to themselves). Usually they just learn their excuses from someone else, that’s enough.
Also, history of science is full of unpredicted and unpredictable twists. If a brilliant nowadays popular explanation of relativity theory or quantum mechanics were shown to some eminent 1850-physicist, it is quite probable that (s)he would have a lot of fun reading it and would not see much sense in it (for example Boltzmann’s ideas were to a large extent accepted only after his suicidal death). Paul Erdo(e)s, another famous mathematician, used to say that he was two and a half billion years old because in his youth the age of the Earth was known to be two billion years and when he got older it was known to be 4.5 billion years. Every day we learn something new, every concept that seemed to be firmly based on scientific evidence may suddenly undergo a large twist, like it happens now for example with issues related to anthropogenesis and human evolution. Most branches of science will have to be re-modelled (although we do not know yet which of them, why and how), some will become exinct like phrenology. I would not be surprised if also our understanding of the climate warming changes significantly some day, which is not to say that we should ignore the threats that we see now.
The difference between fantasy and fundamentalism is rigidity. In fantasy convention may be challenged with impunity. Not so for fundamentalism.
Lovely essay
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I really enjoyed this piece by Ursula Le Guin, but I think she’s wrong that an intellectually as well as aesthetically pleasing story can’t break the rules of maths. Here’s an example from ‘The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance’ by Tamar Szabó Gendler, The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 97, No. 2 (Feb., 2000), pp. 55-8:
The Tower of Goldbach
Long long ago, when the world was created, every even number was the sum of two primes. Although most people suspected that this was the case, no one was completely certain. So a great convocation was called, and for forty days and forty nights, all the mathematicians of the world labored together in an effort to prove this hypothesis. Their efforts were not in vain: at midnight on the fortieth day, a proof was found. “Hoorah!” they cried, “we have unlocked the secret of nature.”
But when God heard this display of arrogance, God was angry. From heaven roared a thundering voice: “My children, you have gone too far. You have understood too many of the universe’s secrets. From this day forth, no longer shall twelve be sum of two primes.” And God’s word was made manifest, and twelve was no longer the sum of two primes.
The mathematicians were distraught-all their efforts had been in vain. They beseeched God: “Please,” they said, “if we can find twelve persons among us who are still faithful to You, will You not relent and make twelve once again the sum of two primes?” And so God agreed.
The mathematicians searched and searched. In one town, they found seven who were righteous. In another, they found five. They tried to bring them together to make twelve, but because twelve was no longer the sum of two primes, they could not. “Lord,” they cried out, “what shall we do? If You lifted Your punishment, there would indeed be twelve righteous souls, and Your decision to do so would be in keeping with Your decree. But until You do, twelve are not to be found, and we are destined forever to have labored in vain.”
God was moved by their plea, and called upon Solomon to aid in making the decision. Carefully, Solomon weighed both sides of the issue. If twelve again became the sum of two primes, then the conditions according to which God and the mathematicians had agreed would be satisfied. And if twelve remained not the sum of two primes, again the conditions according to which God and the mathematicians had agreed would be satisfied. How Solomonic it would be to satisfy the conditions twice over!
So with great fanfare, the celebrated judge announced his resolution of the dispute: From that day on, twelve both was and was not the sum of five and seven. And the heavens were glad, and the mountains rang with joy. And the voices of the five and seven righteous souls rose toward heaven, a chorus twelve and not-twelve, singing in harmonious unity the praises of the Lord.
The End
I love this story! The puzzle of imaginative resistance is a topic in analytic aesthetics, and usually centres around whether an author can change the moral truths of their make believe world. I wonder if maybe you can break any rules if you do it well enough, and as long as you don’t break all of them.
Possibly the best decision I made this summer was to read “Tombs of Atuan” and bookmark Ms. Le Guin’s website/blog-place. Another fine post. Bravo!
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A very interesting piece and thought provoking. There are two kinds of people interested in science I have found. They are related and you can go from one to the other though of us have one type we gravitate toward. The first come to science because they are seeking certainty. Unlike many other disciplines physical science can look like it is absolutist (this is the correct answer) this is the incorrect answer. To some extent it is of course. Much more so than Art where running a book say through a series of “tests” to see if it is any good would be patently ridiculous. So this type of person comes to science because the uncertainty of other disciplines the inherent freedom in them scares them.
The second are drawn to science by a love of discovery a love of wonder and a natural inclination toward questioning. These usually make the more successful scientists.
As you put it so well science is greatly based on uncertainty. A realization that scares many of the first group of people away or leads them to become the worst kind of fundamentalist scientists. Scientists who much like religious fundamentalists admit no other possibility. (there is a novel in that idea I bet…)
Science posits that there IS a fundamental truth there is a right answer to why things are they way they are (there either is a creator or there isn’t for example) but we can never really know if we have that truth because we can never know if we have all the data. So science is based on uncertainty while positing the existence of a certain answer. (may be a distinction without a difference though).
This leads to all kind of definition issues and misunderstandings. A theory in science is not proven (since nothing is ever proven without any doubt in science) but a generally accepted theory is just that, generally accepted. Based on the evidence we have, and the experiments we have done this is what we think is true. So the “theory” of evolution is not just a guess (the nonscientific meaning of theory) but a conclusion based on evidence and experiment and not at all “controversial” (thought it may still be wrong).
Once again the specific way words are used and the same word being used in different ways by different groups of people leads to strife…you would think as a reader of your works this would no longer surprise me..
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