It can indeed when it so limits our vision that any other approach becomes unthinkable, unimaginable.
As data centers become ever-larger percentages of total corporate fixed assets, and as extended downtime becomes unthinkable, exposure to man-made and natural disaster risks also become increasingly important location criteria.
Since then it has become unthinkable for a president to deliver a State of the Union address without honoring a hero in the gallery.
It has become unthinkable for the inhabitants of Derry or Newry that they should once again be cut off from their natural hinterlands in the Irish republic.
Since then, though, it has become unthinkable for presidents to not seek a second term, even as they followed the ritual of pretending they were not necessarily in the race up until the moment they formally entered it, notwithstanding months and even years of extensive preparations.
"For the general public it has become unthinkable that a flight can simply disappear," the European Union said in a paper presented in advance of the two-day talks in Montreal.
And once it was widely accepted that they had transformed the economy's performance, reversing them became unthinkable.The Blairites argue that public-service reform is now making a difference, and that people have noticed.
As a result, many aspects of the study of biology have become unthinkable without the power of computers and the methodologies of computer science.
Gordon Brown, the rejuvenated prime minister, favours tax cuts and spending to boost demand while the Conservatives, with an eye on Britain's dire public finances, urge fiscal restraint.Such an open debate about economic first principles had become unthinkable in recent years.
