Review of “Stephen Hawking Smoked My Socks”
This is a recent review of my new book “Stephen Hawking Smoked by Socks” by D. E. Scott (the reviewer).
The book is cleverly phrased, it grabs the reader and will not let go.
Ratcliffe introduces his subject saying, “With my tail bushed out and my ears flattened, I began a campaign of resistance that was to last forty years. The defining moment in my quest for enlightenment in this frustrating maelstrom came in conversation with the late Professor Geoffrey Burbidge. “Hilton,” he said to me a few months before he died, “the problem is really this: The administrators of education in space science will be extremely loath to abandon the Big Bang Theory, because if they do it will amount to an explicit admission that they actually know far less than they have led us all to believe. That’s the problem. Their pride will simply not allow it.”
He counter balances this (true) statement of Burbidge with praise for the integrity of Steven Hawking. HR describes the ebb and flow of Hawking’s life’s work. Included is his famous bet with Kip Thorne and John Preskill about Black Holes. Hawking and Thorne lost the bet to Preskill. Hawking admitted he was wrong about Black Holes, but Thorne never did. HR describes the details and concludes, “Dr Hawking is one of the most ineffectual scientists in living memory. Why is this?
“It is certainly not because he is stupid; he is in fact exceptionally intelligent. He has courage, passion, and integrity. So why couldn’t he cure cancer or invent a revolutionary telescope or devise a way to more efficiently explore the moons of Saturn? To be quite honest, it is not in the least because he was not capable of doing those things. It is, I submit, because of the method he was trained to use. His conscription to the mathematics of imagination sucked him into a vortex that sustains itself indefinitely without need of physical interaction with reality.”
Ratcliffe describes the anguish of Hawking’s physical challenges and the courage with which he copes with them. HR is generous and gracious in describing Hawking’s forth-rightness, honesty and highly principled behavior in recently admitting his errors.
Some interesting high points are his discussions of:
Hypo-stacking. (Page 63)
- Coining the phrase, “…well-known media-astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson.” (Page 65) Well deserved.
- Description of Belief. The structure of what belief is. The universality of belief. (Page 69)
- Also on page 69 he is perhaps too accepting of an “agnostic” position in situations that clearly call for an honest judgment.
- He explains the subtle distinction between “rational” and “logical”. (Page 70)
- He Defines “objectivity”. He does not mention Ayn Rand’s “A is A.” I think he should have. (Page 71)
Some paragraphs that epitomize the strength of his thesis:
- Page 92 On science by consensus: HR states, “Truth is by no means the product of agreement amongst a majority. In fact, it emerges more often than not from the statistical opposite of consensus. How many people might believe in a particular model has no bearing whatsoever on whether that model aligns with objective reality.” This is ignored by most astronomers and astrophysicists.
- Page 111 On grant proposals: “In writing out a proposal for a research grant, even one that is supposedly non-commercial—perhaps applying to the head of department at a university for project funds—one simply has to include hooks to catch and persuade the potential patron, and that invariably includes the expected, politically correct outcome.”
- Page 147 Ratcliffe puts his finger on the major flaw in modern “astro-science”: “The pure form of the scientific method starts with observation or experience of something in nature that requires elucidation. What we have nowadays is conjecture (mathematical brainstorming) leading to hypotheses, which are built into a hypo-stack containing multiple tuneable parameters, which leads in turn to adjustable predictions, and the eventual creation of a fail-proof model of some or other aspect of existence. This type of model has a built-in, dogmatic defense against falsification. If the preferred conclusion to the logical processes within the model’s formalism is glorious enough, or awesome enough, then the model is inevitably canonised, no matter what anomalies it throws up.”
- Page 149: He attacks the growing practice of misnaming data-free theorizing as “discoveries”. For example: A recent announcement by the science forum Phys.org 46 said, in part, “Writing in the journal Nature, Hendrik Schatz and colleagues describe a newly discovered process that happens within the [neutron] star’s crust, located just below the surface. Until now, scientists thought that nuclear reactions within the crust contributed to the heating of the star’s surface.
“’We previously thought that these reactions were strong enough to heat up the crust,’ said Schatz, an MSU professor of physics and astronomy. ’But that’s not the case.’
“What the team of scientists found is that in the star’s crust near the surface there is a layer where nuclear reactions cause rapid neutrino cooling. Neutrinos are very elementary particles that are created through radioactive decay and pass very quickly through matter.”
HR says, “Reading the quoted passage, I am given the strong impression that these gentlemen have actually discovered something in the crust of a neutron star. They are talking as if they have studied an event on an actual neutron star, and that it increases our understanding of these mysteriously fascinating cosmological objects. As an astrophysicist intensely interested in neutron stars and with privileged access to the literature surrounding them, I know that the assertion being put forward by the authors of the quoted study is patently false, and it tweaks the word discovery in a terribly misleading way.”
Page 154-155 He talks about territoriality – the protection of one’s “turf”. This is strong motivation for power-structure to defend even blatantly false theories. Ratcliffe does not discuss the applications of this principle to the obstruction of new ideas in established, accepted science. He should have. This is obvious to EU people – but much less so to the public at large.
Page 194 One of my favorite paragraphs: “Theoretical physicists are meta- mathematicians. They are people who are convinced and who try to convince the rest of us, that mathematical constructs are the only way in which reality can be properly understood. In their minds, the mathematical description supersedes our experiential interaction with nature. And believe me, they are incorrigible. They brook no dissent, and that’s that. It took me a long time to untangle the causal roots of their dogma, and eventually I settled on this: Because of their training—conditioning, if you will—they are simply incapable of solving problems any other way. Their way is not simply the best way, I hear them say, it’s the only way.”
Ratcliffe contrasts the actions of two ancient dissidents in attempting to put forward their new ideas. Giordano Bruno was unrepentant and therefore had his tongue ripped out and was burned alive by the Catholic Church. Galileo recanted and admitted he was wrong (meanwhile cleverly getting his message out by writing a satirical story about the discussions of three natural philosophers one of whom was clearly himself). He survived. The EU can perhaps learn from this.
Enough said. This book lays out the dangerous shoal, reef-strewn waters the ship of science (and to some extent all society) is plying these days. For a person such as this reviewer who is presently attempting to get a paper published in an “accepted” journal and therefore has to pussy-foot around by avoiding any accurate description of how Kristian Birkeland and Hannes Alfven were professionally castrated by the power structure – this is a delicious work. It is not an “easy read” in one sense, but is so grabbing of one’s sense of what is true, rational, and how important it is to expose these things, I could not put it down.
It is a major contribution to the study of natural philosophy and modern science.
-D. E. Scott
Good points here! Check out my discussion of Hawking’s errors, and my slideshow of The Real Theory of Everything, in the web site above.