animals in M&D

[Scott Badger]

JL:
>
>Er, I'd say the opposite.  Dragons & Unicorns are products of
rationalization.
>Man finds a narwhal horn and postulates on the kind of creature it belonged
>to.  If anything, we are unwilling to accept mysteries per se; we can't
help
>looking for a solution and until we find one, we'll construct one, on our
>own terms.  That the 'solution' can acquire levels of meaning which outlast
>its own usefulness is another matter - you might regard this as a Humanist
>transcendence, maybe.  Or you might call it Art.


I don't really see that we're in opposition.  One form of the transcendence
I was suggesting is Absolute Understanding.  The hunger for which, you point
out -- "If anything, we are unwilling to accept mysteries per se; we can't
help
looking for a solution and until we find one, we'll construct one, on our
own terms."  For this, we looked first to magic, then religion and now
science.  In the context of modern science, is the LED or the Duck that
fantastical?  I read, over the weekend, of genetically altered mice that
displayed markedly increased memory and learning capabilities.  Is a talking
dog that much of a leap?  And, certainly, today's robotics coupled with even
a nominally successful AI technology could produce the Duck.  Or maybe not.
Perhaps the *promise* of today's technologies will seem as fantastic in the
future as the dragon and the unicorn do to us.

Scott