Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Stephen Hawking is Dead

Ever since I first became aware of Stephen Hawking I've had a mixed feeling, starting with awe at his ability which far transcended his paralysis. Hawking was a member of the non-empirical sciences, the falsely named "theoretical" sciences which never develop actual theories, but develop copious hypotheses which are unprovable. Cosmology is unprovable in the extreme, unlike Einstein's Relativity. Hawking's hypothesis of the existence of invisible black holes of unimaginable gravitation is not validated beyond the secondary effects. In recent times the existence of black holes has been questioned; there is no firm knowledge to be had. So Hawking's "discovery" of black holes is, unfortunately, a deception of words.

I took issue with most of what Hawking said in his second book, which started by declaring philosophy to be dead. He failed to understand that everything in that very book is not empirical science, or even close: it is Hawking's philosophy, his hypotheses, and that only. At that point he seemed to be leveraging off of his own fame for validation. And he failed to do a fundamental logic check on his own work.

Still, Hawking was a remarkable man. I for one will miss him.

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