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Story title query -- reality conforms to belief



I remember reading at least one story (there's probably more than one use of this premise around) in which reality was literally shaped by human belief. So when people believed the Earth was flat, it was. When they believed in the ether, it existed. So when enough people believed the Earth was a sphere, it became one. Does anybody know the title?



Answer



I don't really imagine this is the story you seek, but Heinlein's Waldo contains a passage I've always liked, which beautifully encapsulates the worldview you describe:



Suppose Chaos were king and the order we thought we detected in the world about us a mere phantasm of the imagination; where would that lead us? In that case, Waldo decided, it was entirely possible that a ten-pound weight did fall ten times as fast as a one-pound weight until the day the audacious Galileo decided in his mind that it was not so. Perhaps the whole science of ballistics derived from the convictions of a few firm-minded individuals who had sold the notion to the world. Perhaps the very stars were held firm in their courses by the unvarying faith of the astronomers. Orderly Cosmos, created out of Chaos -- by Mind!


The world was flat before geographers decided to think of it otherwise. The world was flat, and the Sun, tub size, rose in the east and set in the west. The stars were little lights, studding a pellucid dome which barely cleared the tallest mountains. Storms were the wrath of gods and had nothing to do with the calculus of air masses. A Mind-created animism dominated the world then.


More recently it had been different. A prevalent convention of materialistic and invariable causation had ruled the world; on it was based the whole involved technology of a machine-powered civilization. The machines worked, the way they were designed to work, because everybody believed in them.


Until a few pilots, somewhat debilitated by overmuch exposure to radiation, had lost their confidence and infected their machines with uncertainty -- and thereby let magic loose in the world.



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