WvB/Hawking

[Andrew Dinn]

Greg Montalbano writes:

> After reading Andrew Dinn's amazingly (inappropriatly?) vitriolic comments
> on vonBraun and Hawking,

You thought *that* was (amazingly) vitriolic? I prefer `pithy' but
there you go.

> I have two quotes I would like to submit.

> The first is Kim Stanley Robinson:
>    "He had taken it as a figure of speech.  But now he recalled Kuhn, as-
> serting that scientists who used different paradigms existed in literally
> different worlds, epistemology being such an integral component of reality.
> Thus Aristoteleans simply did not see the Galilean pendulum, which to them
> was a body falling with some difficulty; and in general, scientists debat-
> ing the relative merits of compteting paradigms simply talked right through
> each other, using the same words to discuss different realities."

Yeah, it's a bit like atheists talking to Catholics - different
worlds. Only, don't get the idea that a scientist is allowed to see
the relativity of the paradigms either. The problem with paradigms is
that they are your world view. And the thing about world views is that
you cannot believe in two of them at the same time - a bit like being
an atheist Catholic. It seems to me that Hawking along with most
popularisers of science (e.g. the execrable James Burke - he could get
me to spray some real acid) is attempting this trick, saying that the
everyday is both everyday and familiar and yet at the same time
something totally unfamiliar. This trick belongs to Bertrand Russell's
spinning head school of philosophy.

> ...and the second quote is from Anthony Burgess:

>    "Crikey, aren't you 'arf a snot!"

One of the things I dislike most about Burgess is his habit of missing
the mark ever so slightly and thereby falling flat as old bitter (and
there's another thing I dislike about him, but I digress). So, whilst
`Crikey, you aren't arf a snot' would be perfectly pucker proletarian
(forgive me the paradoxymoron) your quoted inversion rides up front in
the Dick van Dyke sweep stakes.


Andrew Dinn
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