Three hundred years ago, the Irish empiricist George Berkeley contributed a particularly prescient observation: The only thing we can perceive are our perceptions. In other words, consciousness is the matrix upon which the cosmos is apprehended. Color, sound, temperature, and the like exist only as perceptions in our head, not as absolute essences. In the broadest sense, we cannot be sure of an outside universe at all.
For centuries, scientists regarded Berkeley’s argument as a philosophical sideshow and continued to build physical models based on the assumption of a separate universe “out there” into which we have each individually arrived. These models presume the existence of one essential reality that prevails with us or without us. Yet since the 1920s, quantum physics experiments have routinely shown the opposite: Results do depend on whether anyone is observing.
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According to biocentrism, time does not exist independently of the life that notices it. The reality of time has long been questioned by an odd alliance of philosophers and physicists. The former argue that the past exists only as ideas in the mind, which themselves are neuroelectrical events occurring strictly in the present moment. Physicists, for their part, note that all of their working models, from Isaac Newton’s laws through quantum mechanics, do not actually describe the nature of time. The real point is that no actual entity of time is needed, nor does it play a role in any of their equations. When they speak of time, they inevitably describe it in terms of change. But change is not the same thing as time.
Unless it is truly out there, pretty much everything is a fresh take on an existing trope. It really does need to feel fresh, but that’s not the same as being completely original. The originality is all about how it’s done, not what it’s about.
Yeah, I agree. To a certain extent. Yet if you don’t have a bit of novelty in the “what” department beside the “how” one, you may very well end up with a well-dressed cliche, a “been there, done that”, a mashup of others’ ideas. And that may sell well, perhaps extremely well – yet it quite likely won’t be memorable. 15 minutes of famous cashing in, and then oblivion as the next “no what, but how” contender arrives. Or perhaps your readers will get educated and recognize your inspiration (or, if you weren’t inspired by others, just wrote what others wrote by chance, they’ll realize that there’s tons of similar stuff out there already), and… think a bit less of you? So I think the truth lies somewhere inbetween the two extremes. Originality is not über-important, but neither is it completely irrelevant.
(My previous, very brief post, illustrated with a funny “stolen” image, is here.)
