"Robert A. Heinlein - Lost Legacy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

“One of the best,” certified Phil.



10
“You’ve seen a lot of brains, furthermore you’ve seen ‘em while
they were alive, which is more than most psychologists have. What
do you believe thought is? What do you think makes us tick?”

He grinned at her. “You’ve got me, kid. I don’t pretend to know. It’s
not my business; I’m just a tinker.”

She sat up. “Give me a cigaret, Phil. I’ve arrived just where Phil is,
but by a different road. My father wanted me to study law. I soon
found out that I was more interested in the principles behind law
and I changed over to the School of Philosophy. But philosophy
wasn’t the answer. There really isn’t anything to philosophy. Did
you ever eat that cotton -candy they sell at fairs? Well, philosophy
is like that—it looks as if it were really something, and it’s awfully
pretty, and it tastes sweet, but when you go to bite it you can’t get
your teeth into it, and when you try to swallow, there isn’t anything
there. Philosophy is word-chasing, as significant as a puppy
chasing its tail.

“I was about to get my Ph.D. in the School of Philosophy, when I
chucked it and came to the science division and started taking
courses in psychology. I thought that if I was a good little girl and
patient, all would be revealed to me. Well, Phil has told us what
that leads to. I began to think about studying medicine, or biology.
You just gave the show away on that. Maybe it was a mistake to
teach women to read and write.”

Ben laughed. “This seems to be experience meeting at the village
church; I might as well make my confession. I guess most medical
men start out with a desire to know all about man and what makes
him tick, but it’s a big field, the final answers are elusive and there
is always so much work that needs to be done right now, that we
quit worrying about the final problems. I’m as interested as I ever
was in knowing what life, and thought, and so forth, really are, but I
have to have an attack of insomnia to find time to worry about
them. Phil, are you seriously proposing to tackle such things?”

“In a way, yes. I’ve been gathering data on all sorts of phenomena
that run contrary to orthodox psychological theory—all the junk that
goes under the general name of metapsychics—telepathy,
clairvoyance, so-called psychic manifestations, clair-audience,
levitation, yoga stuff, stigmata, anything of that sort I can find.”