"A Brief History of Time"

Discussion in 'Philosophy' started by southernganja, May 21, 2011.

  1. By Stephen Hawking. Anyone read it? I'm just on the first chapter and although I got an A in astronomy this past semester this is still interesting, mind-boggling and thought provoking stuff. Hawking used to have creationist views (which I believe he did at the time of publication) but he now asserts that there is not a God. I'd be curious to hear other people's thoughts on the subject.
     
  2. You'd be pretty appalled at how much some people hate that guy around here :laughing: I dig that book.
     
  3. i enjoyed reading it.
    but i agree with dudedude, seems like a lot of people here on GC are more qualified and waaaay smarter than Mr. Hawking and they have him figured out.

    fucking stellar crew we have here
     
  4. that's a great book, i also read universe in a nutshell which is also good. it's abundantly clear any time someone takes a dump on hawking that they haven't read anything he's written. i guess there is an alpha-dog effect, since it always seems trendy to hate either the political elite (really just the president) or the intellectual elite (mostly just the guy the media labels as "smartest").
     
  5. I do find that surprising, I mean it's a really good explanation of otherwise really complicated theories. I don't think I could hate Hawking just because the guy has lived through more adversity than most of us but still kicks ass in his field imo.
     
  6. It looked so interesting I bought it a few months ago, but I haven't actually read it. The topics are a little foreign to me because I've never been that consistent with science.

    Maybe I'll watch a video on general relativity or something and then pick it back up.
     
  7. I stopped reading around the Dark Matter chapter; I really need to pick it back up again, as I intended to get through it and also through Universe In a Nutshell.

    By extension, has anyone read any Sagan? I just finished Brocas Brain not too long ago and after I'm done reading some fiction, I want to start on The Demon Haunted World.
     
  8. just picked it up the other day, plan on reading it after a history of god, and the god delusion. then I'll dive into it :)
     
  9. there are some pretty good history channel specials about the universe that are a good introduction, you can probably find them online.
     
  10. That book is a good primer if you plan on delving into the history of science. You might be surprised how many texts are quite accessible to the layperson yet laden with explanation of necessary phenomena. Ya know relativity was only about 80 pages or so.
     
  11. Yeah... I've read it...

    It's a good book, but you shouldn't read the whole thing at once. It's best to take some breaks in between chapters to think about stuff... before you read the next chapter.
     
  12. good call, that's kind of what i'm doing at this point so i don't get bogged down
     
  13. I enjoy his views on aliens. Something to the effect that were we to make contact with them it would most likely be disastrous to our planet. Well maybe not the planet, but to humans at least.
     

Share This Page