Empiricism strikes back: a feeling for triangles

Dick puts emotion and imagination (in their truest form) at the heart of his anti-empiricist argument

My column last month was a semi-temperate rant, triggered by sensationalist reporting of advances in cosmology and particle physics by the mainstream press (the “wormhole in a quantum computer” effect). I attributed this to the coming of age of generations reared on Star Wars and the Marvel Universe, which induces deep longings to flout the laws of physics.

Readers of a philosophical bent may have concluded from this column that I’m a red-faced, harrumphing old British empiricist who lumbers around the world kicking things and shouting “I refute it thus!” but nothing could be further from the truth. By “further from the truth” I mean my philosophical views are 180° opposed to such an empiricism, if you believe that truth is organised as a two-dimensional graph, which I don’t. Instead, I believe that all sentient living creatures, human beings included, are ruled by emotions and live in a world that’s constructed almost entirely by imagination.