WvB/Hawking

[Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt]

Greg Montalbano writes:

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

I think Kim Stanley Robinson, via the above quote, would argue that 
vBraun was in a sense doing precisely that - overlaying two 
'paradigms', not realising that this is not appropriate, nor even 
"literally" possible. Forgetting all the fascism for a moment.
 
> ...and the second quote is from Anthony Burgess:
> 
>    "Crikey, aren't you 'arf a snot!" 

I sincerely hope you mean vBraun.

hg
hag at iafrica.com