Philosophy has intrigued me almost as much as language. I've read it all my
life, profoundly persuaded that cosmologies shape action much as language
shapes thought. Indeed, many of the characters in my fiction are driven by
their beliefs, as, I believe, we all are (Dave, in The Trion Syndrome, acts
because he believes himself to be Trion). One of my favorites in recent
years has been Karl Popper because he distinguishes clearly between
scientific fact and metaphysics—the world of meaning and understanding.
Reading him and E. F. Schumacher shows why the same set of data looks so
different to a neoconservative from the way it does to a liberal: the data
in themselves are meaningless; it is we who create the meaning.
