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I never did finish Steven Hawking's book on Time.

I swore that I would, but the man was simply too eclectic for me.

When I consider thermodynamics..."Drrr, not often" I wonder all about that entropy stuff, and where energy goes when we are not using it. You know important stuff like that, I wonder just how one guy can be so bright.

The very first Course I ever took in Physics, was Astronomy.

I took it as a sort of lark. I figured it would be easy, looking through telescopes and such.

Gosh, did I get burnt in that one.

I worked my butt off just to get a "C."

It was a difficult Course, but I learned a lot from it. A bit more than zero.

Hawking surprised me with his book. Prior, I thought that I could do anything. Any course, any day, any time. I was unable to finish that book. I was too dumb.

Can you recognize the humility in me that I got from that silly Astronomy Course?

I am better for it.

I am better for it

More (if you really WANT to make yourself crazy...best when read in context of above, however):

"The idea that space and time may form a closed surface without boundary also has profound implications for the role of God in the affairs of the universe. With the success of scientific theories in describing events, most people have come to believe that God allows the universe to evolve according to a set of laws and does not intervene in the universe to break these laws. However, the laws do not tell us what the universe should have looked like when it started - it would still be up to God to wind up the clockwood and choose how to start it off. So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundaries or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

So...from zero...God creating a perpetual motion machine that has no creator.

My head hurts....

"Can you recognize the humility in me that I got from that silly Astronomy Course?"

Yes, I recognize the humility, I had a similar experience, with a different course. Perterbation Methods, a graduate level math course. What I learned, aside from not nearly enough from the course, was that everybody has their limits, as to what level of abstraction they can handle. I'm glad I found mine. When I talk to people, much more important than knowing what their limits of understanding are, is finding out if they even comprehend or will admit that there are limits to their understanding.

Note that this type of thing, finding one's limits of understanding in terms of level of abstraction, finding that one has such limits, is much more concrete in the hard sciences, than it is in the arts and humanities. This is why so many people who come from the humanities side of the educational spectrum (cough ... lawyers ... cough) are either unaware of their own limits of understanding, or are even unaware that they even have limits to their own understanding. So instead they try to contort every description of reality into something they can comprehend, without realizing they are doing so. And this leads them into talking about versions of reality (as if they were real) which are weirdly alien to everybody else on the planet. I don't think this is good for the human race. So I commend you on your discussion of human limits to understanding.

" The very first Course I ever took in Physics, was Astronomy. I took it as a sort of lark. I figured it would be easy, looking through telescopes and such.
Gosh, did I get burnt in that one.
I worked my butt off just to get a "C."
It was a difficult Course, but I learned a lot from it. A bit more than zero."

HAHAHAH Been There Done That!!!

I took English for Engineering students. I figured they would think hey these are Engineering students they need help with English and go easier on us...

Wrong!!! Entire course consisted of taking one technical engineering idea in your field, I chose Nuclear Fusion (second mistake...) Then create 4 papers Process/Definition, Feasibility, Cost Analysis, and Predictive/Outlook and combine those four papers in to one final paper/presentation and that one presentation is your grade.

That was an UGLY class. By the time it was over and I had my C I also had $100+ in library fines for the massive amount of books I had borrowed...