Similar Concepts
In 1996, a unicorn that no one can see was adapted as a teaching device at Camp Quest, the first free-thought summer camp for children established in the United States, by Dr. L. Wilson. As reported years later in the July 21, 2006 Cincinnati Enquirer, "Campers must try to prove that imaginary unicorns—as a metaphor for God—don't exist." Richard Dawkins alluded to unicorns in this connection in his 2006 book The God Delusion, writing that "Russell's teapot, of course, stands for an infinite number of things whose existence is conceivable and cannot be disproved. A philosophical favorite is the invisible, intangible, inaudible unicorn."
In the essay The Dragon in my Garage from the book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle In the Dark, Carl Sagan uses the example of an invisible dragon breathing heatless fire that someone claims lives in his garage. The supposed dragon cannot be seen, heard, or sensed in any way, nor does it leave footprints. There is no reason to believe this purported dragon exists.
Read more about this topic: Invisible Pink Unicorn
Famous quotes containing the words similar and/or concepts:
“Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who were.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Science is a dynamic undertaking directed to lowering the degree of the empiricism involved in solving problems; or, if you prefer, science is a process of fabricating a web of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiments and observations and fruitful of further experiments and observations.”
—James Conant (1893–1978)