The World of Thoughts, Ideas, and Beliefs

Abstract

None of the structures discussed in the previous chapter appeared fully formed in the world. Someone first had to imagine them. The world of the mind is important not only because our thoughts help create our personal reality, but because, almost uniquely among living creatures, humans can transform imagination into substance. Humans have been astonishingly successful at implementing those transformations. Indeed, perhaps humanity’s eventual undoing will be the conviction among certain politicians that those transformations are always possible, can always take place. The conviction that the external world must accord with what goes on inside their heads.