A Quote by Alan Lightman
I have always loved magic realism as a form of writing. I have also been fascinated for a long time with the intersection of science and religion.
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I'm fascinated with genetic science, and I have been for a very long time. I always look at science and technology because I think that the developments in my lifetime have been so remarkable - and we're only at the tip of the iceberg with projects like decoding the human genome.
When people use the term magic realism, usually they only mean 'magic' and they don't hear 'realism', whereas the way in which magic realism actually works is for the magic to be rooted in the real. It's both things. It's not just a fairytale moment. It's the surrealism that arises out of the real.
Magic Realism is not new. The label's new, the specific Latin American form of it is new, its modern popularity is new, but it's been around as long as literature has been around.
Magic is never totally scientifically explainable, but science has always been, at one time or another, considered magic.
As religion is now practiced and science is now practiced, there is no intersection between the two. That is for certain. And it’s not for want of trying. Over the centuries, many people—theologians as well scientists - have tried to explore points of intersection. And anytime anyone has declared that harmony has risen up, it is the consequence of religion acquiescing to scientific discovery. In every single case.
One of the things that always fascinated me about the Renaissance was that it was a time both of great scientific discovery and also of superstition and belief in magic. And so it was a period in which Galileo invented the telescope, but also a time when hundreds were burned at the stake because people thought they were witches.
I think that, in addition of the intersection of media and technology, there has also been an intersection between technology and finance, which is something I find a little closer to home, seeing as I spend so much time covering Wall Street banks.
I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Michael Bulgakov, and Salman Rushdie. I also like the magic realist writers, such as Borges and Marquez, and feel that interesting truths can be learned about our world by exploring highly distorted worlds.
There is some confusion as to what magic actually is. I think this can be cleared up if you just look at the very earliest descriptions of magic. Magic in its earliest form is often referred to as “the art”. I believe this is completely literal. I believe that magic is art and that art, whether it be writing, music, sculpture, or any other form is literally magic.
William knows that science and magic are the same thing; magic is only science that hasn't been explained yet. Tonight he has made chemistry into magic for her.
I've been writing for a long time, and I've loved comic books for a long time - forever - but I had to learn how to write in a different way to write sequential art for a graphic novel. It's been an interesting transition.
Science was always a passion, but I also loved 'Monty Python' and 'The Young Ones,' and I discovered the Footlights comedy club at university, where a lot of those people got their start. I had a go and loved it immediately. After that, I just couldn't stop writing sketches, and it all took off from there.
I have always been fascinated by the way things work and how they came to take the form that they did. Writing about these things satisfies my curiosity about the made world while at the same time giving me an opportunity to design a new explanation for the processes that shape it.
It’s dead obvious that creationism isn’t science, or even bad science. It’s nonsense. But I’ve long stated it’s also bad religion, because it doesn’t just take faith, it also takes a phenomenal disregard of reality.
My interests drew me in different directions. On the one hand I was powerfully attracted by science, with its truths based on facts; on the other hand I was fascinated by everything to do with comparative religion. [...] In science I missed the factor of meaning; and in religion, that of empiricism.
I don't think there is any incompatibility between science and mysticism . . . Immanent religion is the only form of religion in which there is no conflict at all, that I can see, between science and religion.
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