# Perspective, Phantom Pain

This is another copy-paste to preserve it on my webpage. I occasionally
wrote this on emails. But I realised that I haven't written it
here. This is deeply related to some of my posts.

This comes from Emi route of the visual novel Katawa Shoujo. The
best route in the game. It is so Nietzsche. But much more than that.




## Script

> Mutou: "What does a scientist do?"
>
> Hisao: "Observe the world around him."
>
> Mutou: "Exactly. Good. A simple question, but one that most people
> can't seem to answer. That's the essence of a scientist, Hisao.
> We observe what's there, and try to figure it out. But what if
> there's something you can't figure out? What's a scientist to do
> if he can't observe something? How, for example, can we talk
> about quarks when nobody has ever actually seen one? Or black
> holes when observing them directly is impossible?"
>
> Hisao: "Well, scientific equipment's pretty advanced..."
>
> Mutou irritably waves away my response.
>
> Mutou: "No, that's not it at all. Those are tools, I'm trying to
> give you a philosophy. Think. If you can't observe something
> directly, then how can you observe it?"
>
> Hisao: "Uh, guess?"
>
> Mutou: "How? How would you guess the movement of a quark? What
> is your guess based on?"
>
> Of course. I should have thought of it earlier.
>
> Hisao: "The things it affects."
>
> Mutou claps his hands together excitedly and whoops.
>
> Mutou: "Yes, exactly. Good. Remember that, Hisao. If you can't
> examine something directly, it's because you're looking at it
> wrong. You have to look at it differently if you want to uncover
> the truth. And if it eludes you, then look at what it leaves
> behind. That is the essence of being a scientist. We never stop
> looking for the answer. Never take anything for granted. Observe,
> experiment, and observe some more. There's a lot of stuff out
> there that makes no sense, Hisao. Your job is to get it to make
> sense. If nothing else, I hope you've learned that here."
>
> "Katawa Shoujo", Act 3 - Perspective, Phantom Pain



An artist takes the opposite direction of the exact same way.