Photo by Vinicius “amnx” Amano on Unsplash

The Limits of Rationality & the Value of Imagination in Science (and other epistemologies)

Georgia NeSmith
2 min readNov 22, 2021

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(IN PROGRESS)

THIS IN-PROGRESS ESSAY is being developed in response to “iPhones in old paintings — Is this evidence of Time Travellers?by David Gamble. It is taking far longer to complete for many reasons (see one of them below). But it will be done…eventually! I’m thinking I will parse out ideas and arguments as they come to me, and y’all can see how I make “progress” in writing on a subject, despite the constant pull of a whole world of other interests.

Caveat: this article was not written for people who, like MAGATs, do not grasp the concept of rational interpretation of other people’s writing or art because they see the world constructed in mutually exclusive, diametrical opposites: one black (aka “bad”) and one white (aka *good”). CAUTION: DO NOT immediately imagine I am talking about race.

I do often talk about race. Hell, I am very much a fan of Critical Race Theory, that ubiquitously hated subject that a rather large subset of the US population wants to remove from study, even in college level courses, even though they haven’t the slightest clue what it means, other than it drops the veil of “white hero/heroine” worship from a whole lot of white people acting in both historical and present times. Most can’t even name the

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Georgia NeSmith
Georgia NeSmith

Written by Georgia NeSmith

Retired professor, feminist, writer, photographer, activist, grandmother of 5, overall Wise Woman. Phd UIA School of Journalism & Mass Communication, 1994.

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