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Fantods, whole no. 9, Winter 1945

Page 13

EFTY-NINE     page 13

fore type hopes to see again one of these days. Oh yes, and still on the Strangers' meeting, I've since looked up and read Mitchell's "Amos Judd". It should rate a line or two in Sw's Comprehensive Treatise on Time Travel, even though Judd's prophetic power was due to the touch of Vishnu and the Moirae had to work extra hard to keep fate respectably inexorable.
Russ gets on with the good work in his reduction of the fantasy sense to cases. As for a specific example, I've enlisted the cooperation of Rosco Wright, whose fantasy sense is in many ways much more developed than my own, on a small project which, if it doesn't make this issue, should be in efty-ten. Note, please, that I use the term "fantasy sense" to encompass both the comprehension of fantasy and the pleasure-sensation deriving from that comprehension. The first is the active phase of the sense -- what Art prefers to call "imagination" (moron this below) -- and the second, more or less passive in nature.

YHOS: Gaze upon this, Art:
"We then saw a circular space of a diameter of about two hundred yards, and of an absolute flatness. It seemed that there was nothing more than the sides had shown already to reward our climbing. Except--so small a thing. A tiny point of light on the surface at the centre--so small a point. As we walked toward it I expected it to show more largely, but it did not do so. When we stood within a few yards, which was the nearest we dared to venture, it was still too small for the eye to measure. It was a point without magnitude. I cannot say that it was embedded in, or that it lay upon, the surface. I cannot say that it was red or yellow: it was fire. It did not change or sparkle."
And then upon this:
"Every bounded set of numbers has a least upper bound. For let B be the upper limit of the set. Either there are no numbers of the set greater than B , or there are such numbers. In the first case B is the least upper bound, since no numbers are above B and there are numbers arbitrarily close to B below it. In the second case let a be a number of the set greater than B . There are only a finite number of numbers of the set equal or greater than a, since otherwise there would be an accumulation point above B, which is impossible. We therefore need only choose the greatest of these numbers; it will be the upper bound of the set."
Now there's no question but that imagination (and some acquaintance with the jargon in the second example) is requisite to comprehension of either of these passages in their respective contexts. Both have their elements which require to be integrated into a meaningful whole: In one a concatenation of inexplicable phenomena from which one builds up a sortuva worm's-eye impression of a superior culture of frightening potentialities and disturbingly obscure motives; the other a set of mathematical entities whose interrelation we must grasp in order to perceive the truth of a proposition. But are we justified in taking imagination as an exact description of fantasy sense or of mathematical sense? The two are not the same, obviously; were they, we'd all be promising mathematics and all mathmen would be fantasy enthusiasts.
Apparently it is not enough to say that Louis Russell Chauvenet and Grandpere Chauvenet of "Chauvenet's Criterion"both are/were distinguished by the possession of good and active imaginative powers. The fantasy-comprehensive may have but ordinary ability to comprehend the stock-in-trade of the mathman,

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EFTY-NINE page 13 fore type hopes to see again one of these days. Oh yes, and still on the Strangers' meeting, I've since looked up and read Mitchell's "Amos Judd". It should rate a line or two in Sw's Comprehensive Treatise on Time Travel, even though Judd's prophetic power was due to the touch of Vishnu and the Moirae had to work extra hard to keep fate respectably inexorable. Russ gets on with the good work in his reduction of the fantasy sense to cases. As for a specific example, I've enlisted the cooperation of Rosco Wright, whose fantasy sense is in many ways much more developed than my own, on a small project which, if it doesn't make this issue, should be in efty-ten. Note, please, that I use the term "fantasy sense" to encompass both the comprehension of fantasy and the pleasure-sensation deriving from that comprehension. The first is the active phase of the sense -- what Art prefers to call "imagination" (moron this below) -- and the second, more or less passive in nature. YHOS: Gaze upon this, Art: "We then saw a circular space of a diameter of about two hundred yards, and of an absolute flatness. It seemed that there was nothing more than the sides had shown already to reward our climbing. Except--so small a thing. A tiny point of light on the surface at the centre--so small a point. As we walked toward it I expected it to show more largely, but it did not do so. When we stood within a few yards, which was the nearest we dared to venture, it was still too small for the eye to measure. It was a point without magnitude. I cannot say that it was embedded in, or that it lay upon, the surface. I cannot say that it was red or yellow: it was fire. It did not change or sparkle." And then upon this: "Every bounded set of numbers has a least upper bound. For let B be the upper limit of the set. Either there are no numbers of the set greater than B , or there are such numbers. In the first case B is the least upper bound, since no numbers are above B and there are numbers arbitrarily close to B below it. In the second case let a be a number of the set greater than B . There are only a finite number of numbers of the set equal or greater than a, since otherwise there would be an accumulation point above B, which is impossible. We therefore need only choose the greatest of these numbers; it will be the upper bound of the set." Now there's no question but that imagination (and some acquaintance with the jargon in the second example) is requisite to comprehension of either of these passages in their respective contexts. Both have their elements which require to be integrated into a meaningful whole: In one a concatenation of inexplicable phenomena from which one builds up a sortuva worm's-eye impression of a superior culture of frightening potentialities and disturbingly obscure motives; the other a set of mathematical entities whose interrelation we must grasp in order to perceive the truth of a proposition. But are we justified in taking imagination as an exact description of fantasy sense or of mathematical sense? The two are not the same, obviously; were they, we'd all be promising mathematics and all mathmen would be fantasy enthusiasts. Apparently it is not enough to say that Louis Russell Chauvenet and Grandpere Chauvenet of "Chauvenet's Criterion"both are/were distinguished by the possession of good and active imaginative powers. The fantasy-comprehensive may have but ordinary ability to comprehend the stock-in-trade of the mathman,