me...

Today is the 42nd day of 2002. For you unhoopy froods, The Hitchhiker's Trilogy cites 42 as The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. i've been pondering my affinity for this notion, and i think i've finally found a personal emotional model of truth.

Knowledge takes two forms: the rational and the emotional. i can recognize something as a rational truth and still not believe it. Conversely, i can feel something to be true without a rational foundation. Extending this beyond the realm of absolutism, there are certainly rational models of truth (i.e. light as particles or waves), so i conjectured there must also be emotional models of truth - hypotheses we engage not for a rational benefit, but for an emotional one. Unfortunately, i had no experience in what seemed the most obvious candidate, God. However, i realize now that 42 provides me a purely emotional reward; i am rationally aware of its absurdity, but the presence of a final answer is undeniably comforting.

Additionally, the paper i should be writing for my Science Fiction class will be based on my presumption of the genre's lost function, of which i think 42 a clever reworking. It is my belief that early "Scientifiction" eased anxieties over the ever-looming branches of Science and their possible encroachments on everday life. In presenting fictional extremes, these stories defined realistic limits for Science. i feel that Douglas Adams has used this same tactic to tackle Philosophy. 42, for example, embodies the rational pursuit of knowledge (think Einstein's mythic Universal Field Theory) at an impossible extreme, thus foretelling the inevitable failure of The Answer as a method of understanding.

posted by Arthur @ 2/11/2002 11:40:00 PM

Monday, February 11, 2002