| I read The brief history of time as soon as it came out in print. There are better books explaining modern physics. But I guess it became a best seller partly not just because the author, Stephen Hawking was a legendary physicist. Wasting away terminal motor neuron disease, he was confined to a wheelchair, unable to speak naturally, yet he toured the vast vistas of space-time that IS our Universe with the pure power of human thought that was his. This fact is extraordinary. I scoured his books to see how he managed the human that he undoubtedly was, yet saw only the physicist. No room for ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’ to the Universe. He seems to be saying. It was recently that I saw “The theory of everything” . And I see the missing piece to the puzzle of how Hawking, the human, continued to be. Jane Hawking. I read her autobiographical “Traveling to infinity’ after that. It is exhaustive, and exhausting. Keeping Hawking alive was incredibly difficult. How scientific are the concepts of ‘commitment’ , ‘purpose’, ‘meaning’ and ‘faith’?? We don’t know. Does the Universe have a purpose? Is there any meaning in us being?We don’t know. But one thing we know. If Jane had thought that her, and Stephen, continuing to be, had no meaning, He just wouldn’t be. Just wouldn’t be, still. (Jimmy Mathew) |
The incredible meaninglessness of being?
