SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF

“Suspension of disbelief” or “willing suspension of disbelief” is a term coined in 1817 by the poet, literary critic, and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  He held that if a writer added “a human interest, and a semblance of truth” to a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgement regarding the implausibility of the narrative.
  
Novels of the action, comedy, fantasy, and horror genres are typically where this technique is employed.  It has always been an aspect of stage plays, and nowadays is central to television and film.  Circus sideshow acts and magic acts also rely on it; an audience is not expected to believe that a woman is actually being cut in half before their eyes or that a cat has been transformed into an ape.

We suspend our disbelief, in the same way, concerning what we are and what this place is.  All we know is that we are living beings among countless other living and nonliving beings on a planet revolving around a star among innumerable other planets revolving around stars in a universe too vast for our limited human minds to grasp, all of which is time bound.  If we did not suspend our disbelief that we are what we are, and are where we are, we would go mad.