“Jesus, Siri. People aren’t rational. You aren’t rational. We’re
not thinking machines, we’re—we’re feeling machines that happen
to think.”
There are lines said by Pag as above, in the page of 194.
This short comment of Pag indicates the most evocative and compelling thematic aspect of the novel. If the study of inspecting every single objective priciples of the universe is ‘science,’ in the novel, Blindsight, there is no agreement on such a ‘science.’ For instance, a human: human has a cognition ability, so human can recognize or realize something. Thus, humans have considered their such ability as the utmost feature among all of the other features of creatures in the world. However, as I commented in Twitter last time, Cunningham, one of the characters in the novel, denies this assumption. According to his argument, which could corresponds to that of Peter Watts, the speciese of Rorchach is far much better than the humans in terms of adaptability to the environment. Since the cognition and realization of the humans evokes lots of mistakes and illusions, humans are inferior to the other species . The author handles with the idea of that our(humans’) superior awareness which we think as the best is not that big thing. Thus, this novel makes us reflect on our species. This kind of experimental idea is well melted in the sentences above. We, the humans, are not the thinking machines. We are not rational! We are just feeling as it is. And when we think, that is just when it happens to think. The definition of a human, as “thinking animal,” is totally denied here. The author indeed clashes against the humans, or himself, by his novel and this is what made Blindsight be impressive to many readers.