Wednesday 6 June 2007

06/06/07: Bertrand Russell's Coffee Pot



I'm reading 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins, which is fantastic. I've just got to the bit about Bertrand Russell's teapot:

"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."
("Is there a God?" commissioned (but never published) by Illustrated magazine in 1952)

Now that I've drawn a coffee pot as a spaceship I'm thinking, when Brition does finally launch a spaceship they ought to make it look like an everyday object...but huge, because then if we do meet any aliens they'll think we must be giants!
This artwork is available as a free pdf at: www.dailyartblog.com

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