Man inhabits two realms, that of reality and that of the imagination. The progress of science is a complex negotiation between these two realms, a dialectic in which fact-oriented observations and probability-oriented imagination are inseparably intertwined. But there are many signs that, recently, the natural equilibrium between these two has become destabilized and artifice and imagination have gained the upper hand to a distinctly unhealthy extent. In both science and scholarship we seem to be involved in an increasing and deeply problematic shift from pre-occupation with virtual rather than actual reality.