Stephen Hawking

[poliphilo]

An apple falls from the tree and hits you on the head- I get that. Survival of the fittest- easy-peasy. Relativity? Yes, you can tell little stories about it. For example.

There was a young lady called Bright
Who travelled much faster than light.
She departed one day
In a relative way
And arrived on the previous night.

Great scientific theories have an elegance about them. They can be reduced to their essence and expressed in terms that the layperson can grasp.  There's something at the core of them that's memorable.  So, if Stephen Hawking's cosmology is true it should, I feel, be possible to express it in a catchphrase, a short story, a joke, a limerick. Since nobody seems able to do this I conclude that it's almost certainly false.

Hawking himself was narrating his life story on TV last night. He comes across as remarkably naive. And vain. And smug. He seems to want to be seen as a universal sage- on the Einsteinian model- but lacks Einstein's ability to come up with tremendous one-liners. You may have gathered that I don't much care for him. And you'd be right. 

Comments

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

Nor do i. His only contribution of note is black holes and that they over time evaporate and dissipate their energy and is known as Hawking radiation. There are far more cleverer scientists in this field that shun the limelight.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

He's not one of those scientists- like Newton, Darwin, Einstein- who fundamentally change our view of reality.

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

Advanced physics and cosmology is a bit beyond the human brain's capability to make limericks, I'm afraid.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I wonder how famous he would be without his disability. Ironically it may have been "good" for his career.

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

One of my exes has a PhD in astronomy. She says that Hawkings work was a game changer. It just may be that we all don't understand astronomy. Me, I have no opinion. Astronomy is not my field.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You see, I disagree. I think the truth is always simple- in its essence- and if Hawking's ideas aren't simple it's because they're not true.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think it has.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not going to argue with a real astronomer- but I still have my doubts.

[veronikos.livejournal.com]

I have found many of his statements to have flaws of logic. Many scientists are smuggish, ignorant assholes. Or so, I have observed. Courses in basic propositional logic should be mandatory in the hard sciences. The current state of affairs is rather embarrassing.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes. Entirely so.