Question 7

by Richard Flanagan

As he lay back in his tub that autumnal London morning, Leo Szilard wondered why the forecasts of writers sometimes prove to be more accurate than those of scientists. Admittedly he had done little work in atomic physics. This struck him as an advantage. He was unburdened by knowing things. The theories he could make up. He told himself that science was above all a product of the subconscious. The creative scientist, he felt, had much in common with the artist and the poet.