Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Tex_GOP_Cruz
Your excerpts above don't impress me with their simplicity. I gave up on Hawking's "Brief History of Time" after only about a page and a half (not including the acknowledgements).

When physicists can explain the universe as simply as understanding a computer, then I'll be ready for them!

23 posted on 05/25/2004 11:21:01 PM PDT by hunter112
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies ]


To: hunter112
Your excerpts above don't impress me with their simplicity.

Well, the simplicity was expounded upon over dozens of pages. It wasn't so simple that I didn't have to reread certain things or that I could regurgitate everything to another person. Let's just say I had a sense that I was absorbing most of the information, at least until he started getting into the details of string theory. Greene's explanations of concepts were colorful and presented in small enough pieces for me to comprehend. By the way, I am speaking of THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE and not the book emphasized in the interview link, though both are about the same topic.

24 posted on 05/25/2004 11:34:16 PM PDT by Tex_GOP_Cruz (Remember Estrada!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies ]

To: hunter112
When physicists can explain the universe as simply as understanding a computer, then I'll be ready for them!

Unfortunately, that may not be possible. Computers are specifically built in order to *be* understandable by their owners. The universe's properties, on the other hand, don't seem to have been formulated with a consideration for what might seem "easily understandable" for us.

In fact, J.B.S. Haldane's famous line may well be very true: "The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we *can* imagine."

Or on a more flippant note, there's Mark Twain's, "Of course truth is stranger than fiction: Fiction, after all, has to make sense."

The point of course is that fiction is purposely constructed so as to make some sense to the reader -- but reality is under no such restriction whatsoever, and is often such that it makes little or no sense to human notions of how things "ought" to be or "ought" to behave.

The universe just is what it is, whether we can wrap our minds around it or not.

46 posted on 05/26/2004 9:18:26 PM PDT by Ichneumon
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson