Newton wasn't wrong

From: ANDOVER_at_delphi.com
Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 22:58:01 -0400 (EDT)


Einstein and Gauss and the others didn't prove Newton WRONG; they just made his mathematics a smaller part of a larger reality. One could suggest the same for RQ III/RQ II. In terms of modern cosmology, much of the debate so far has been at a relatively unsophisticated level.

My only problem with the extreme subjective view (although I am an historian myself) is not that of what "really happened," in some abstract sense, but the rather more important question, for a GM, of what WILL happen. By this I mean, when culture A meets Culture B, which has a different view of the world and its past/meaning, in most cases one view proves RIGHT, not in some abstract sense, but in the sense that, say, the Indian Ghost Dancers found out that their dances did not stop the white man's bullets.

I'm reminded of Isaac Asimov's Foundation, in which he points out that the "religion of science" WORKS. I'm quite prepared to believe that it doesn't work on Glorantha, but as a GM, or a player, I still want to know what does. "Copenhagen theorists" might be right about quantum mechanics, but even they don't act in our world as if their thoughts determine reality.

I note that Martin Laurie's characters have yet to be defeated by someone interpreting reality differently at them (was it a John Brunner story in which the human children defeated monsters by disbelieving in them?). AD&D has some sort of solipsism spell, but RQ doesn't. Maybe it should be introduced into the new version.

Jim Chapin


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