Dave Farber
2018-10-21 22:33:46 UTC
Date: October 21, 2018 23:19:26 JST
Subject: Review of new books by physicists Hawking and Martin Rees
Dave, FYI my Wall Street Journal critique of books by physics titans Stephen Hawking and Martin Rees. John Horgan
Weâre still waiting to solve the riddle of existenceâwith no sign todayâs physicists are on the right track.
A high point of my career as a science journalist was a cosmology workshop I bulled my way into in 1990. Thirty luminaries of physics gathered in a rustic resort in northern Sweden to swap ideas about how our universe was born. Stephen Hawking, although almost entirely paralyzed, was the id of the meeting, a joker with a Mick Jagger smirk. Martin Rees, cool and elegant, was the superego, as befitting a future president of the Royal Society, one of scienceâs most venerable institutionsâŠ
One afternoon everyone piled into a bus and drove to a local church to hear a concert. As the scientists proceeded down the center aisle of the packed church, led by Hawking in his wheelchair, parishioners stood and applauded. These churchgoers seemed to be acknowledging that science was displacing religion as the source of answers to the deepest mysteries, like why we exist.
That scene came to mind as I read two new books, âBrief Answers to the Big Questions,â by Hawking and âOn the Future: Prospects for Humanityâ by Mr. Rees. The authorsâ styles differâHawking cocky, Rees soberâbut the substance of their books overlaps. They offer brisk, lucid peeks into the future of science and of humanity. They evince a profound faith in scienceâs power to demystify nature and bend it to our endsâŠ. Yet reading these books was a bittersweet experience, and not only because Hawking died last March, at 76... The works resemble relics from a long-gone golden age: The high priests of science no longer enjoy the prestige they did just a few decades agoâŠ
Continue at https://www.wsj.com/articles/brief-answers-to-the-big-questions-and-on-the-future-review-serious-doubt-on-serious-earth-1539909146
-------------------------------------------Subject: Review of new books by physicists Hawking and Martin Rees
Dave, FYI my Wall Street Journal critique of books by physics titans Stephen Hawking and Martin Rees. John Horgan
Weâre still waiting to solve the riddle of existenceâwith no sign todayâs physicists are on the right track.
A high point of my career as a science journalist was a cosmology workshop I bulled my way into in 1990. Thirty luminaries of physics gathered in a rustic resort in northern Sweden to swap ideas about how our universe was born. Stephen Hawking, although almost entirely paralyzed, was the id of the meeting, a joker with a Mick Jagger smirk. Martin Rees, cool and elegant, was the superego, as befitting a future president of the Royal Society, one of scienceâs most venerable institutionsâŠ
One afternoon everyone piled into a bus and drove to a local church to hear a concert. As the scientists proceeded down the center aisle of the packed church, led by Hawking in his wheelchair, parishioners stood and applauded. These churchgoers seemed to be acknowledging that science was displacing religion as the source of answers to the deepest mysteries, like why we exist.
That scene came to mind as I read two new books, âBrief Answers to the Big Questions,â by Hawking and âOn the Future: Prospects for Humanityâ by Mr. Rees. The authorsâ styles differâHawking cocky, Rees soberâbut the substance of their books overlaps. They offer brisk, lucid peeks into the future of science and of humanity. They evince a profound faith in scienceâs power to demystify nature and bend it to our endsâŠ. Yet reading these books was a bittersweet experience, and not only because Hawking died last March, at 76... The works resemble relics from a long-gone golden age: The high priests of science no longer enjoy the prestige they did just a few decades agoâŠ
Continue at https://www.wsj.com/articles/brief-answers-to-the-big-questions-and-on-the-future-review-serious-doubt-on-serious-earth-1539909146
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