Life & Wisdom Quote by Philip Pullman

Pullman’s move here is slyly mathematical: he borrows the most famous “impossible” tool in science to defend the most contested “impossible” couple in theology. Imaginary numbers aren’t pretend; they’re a conceptual hack that turns unsolvable problems into solvable ones. By likening Adam and Eve to sqrt(-1), Pullman reframes Genesis not as a literal origin story to be fact-checked, but as a symbolic instrument you plug into human meaning-making. The jab is gentle but pointed: calling something “imaginary” is often a way to dismiss it, yet whole architectures of knowledge run on entities you can’t hold in your hand.

The intent is classic Pullman: rescue myth from fundamentalism while also stripping it of the authority claims that make it dangerous. He’s not asking you to believe in Adam and Eve as historical persons; he’s arguing that the narrative function of “first people,” “first choice,” and “first rupture” structures how cultures talk about innocence, desire, shame, and responsibility. The subtext is anti-literalist and anti-reductionist at once: facts alone can’t carry the load of moral psychology, but stories can.

Context matters because Pullman has spent a career waging war on pious certainty, especially the kind that weaponizes innocence. Imaginary numbers let him praise the usefulness of a fiction without conceding its truth. It’s a secular defense of sacred narrative: myths as mental technology, not divine report. The sting is that the story’s power doesn’t prove its source; it proves our need for frameworks that make the mess of being human computable.