A quick one today, I apologize, because I’m feeling very under the weather. I usually read on a lot of bizarre and out there topics, things that are weird and esoteric, because… Well, I guess I tend to like that side of the world. For example, last night it was tulpas and tulkus and Alexandra David-Néel. But browsing around today, I found a nice counterpoint to all of that from one of my favorite authors as a child, the Hugo award winner Isaac Asimov, a man well known for his skepticism. This is from his 1997 book, The Roving Mind:

Don’t you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don’t you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death?

No, I reply. No, no, no, and again no.

One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out, “Don’t you believe in anything?”

“Yes,” I said. “I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.”

Timothy Leary said that “science is all metaphor,” and while I do believe in the magic and wonder of the world, the weird and the bizarre, a strong part of me finds overwhelming truth in what Asimov said. Not just something, not just anything, but everything is in the eye of the beholder, for each to reconcile on their own, right?

Wolf Parade “I’ll Believe In Anything” (mp3)

Her Space Holiday “I’ll Believe In Anything” (Wolf Parade cover)(mp3)

Isaac Asimov, was of course one of the most prolific American authors, having written or edited over 500 books in his lifetime, and was a brilliant science fiction writer (or is that syence fyction?). If you’ve never read his Foundation novels, you should because they’re wonderful. He also gave us the three laws of robotics and was instrumental in getting Gene Roddenberry’s ass in gear when it came to revitalizing the Star Trek concept after the show had been canceled in the 60s, as well as appropiating the idea of grok from Robert A. Heinlein into the phrase “I Grok Spock,” which, if nothing else, probably got Asimov and Roddenberry laid quite a bit at science fiction conventions in the 60s and 70s.

George Lucas and J.J. Abrams just gossiping and chatting it up.

But more importantly, as far as I know, he’s one of the only authors to have written in nine of the ten categories of the Dewey decimal system, the notable exception being the 100s, which is philosophy and psychology, interestingly enough.