On 21 April 2014 18:21, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On 4/20/2014 10:03 PM, LizR wrote:
>
> On 21 April 2014 16:27, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> “People are more unwilling to give up the word ‘God’ than to give
>> up the idea for which the word has hitherto stood”
>> --- Bertrand Russell
>>
> :-)
>
> Indeed!
>
> Even physicists have been getting some mileage out of it ("The God
> Particle" etc).
>
>
> Of course it's publishers, not authors, that chose titles. I remember a
> well known author telling how, once when he had fallen on hard times he
> wrote a romance to be published under a house nome d'plume. He called it
> "South Sea Interlude". The publisher said they should call it "Captive of
> Temptation". He objected that there was no captive in the story and it had
> nothing to do with temptation, so why should they call it "Captive of
> Temptation"? The publisher patiently explained that if they called it
> "South Sea Interlude" it would sell 5000 copies. If they called it
> "Captive of Temptation" it would sell 400,000 copies.
>
>
Yes, it can be, although publishers aren't necessarily better at choosing
titles than writers. "The God Particle" was (allegedly) chosen by the
author (Leon Lederman), but as a joke. Hawking apparently put his famous
"mind of god" quote in to please his wife (which is I imagine how the
god-in-physics business got started - or was that "God and the New Physics"
by Paul Davies?). I'm sure writers and publishers now realise that having
"God" in the title sells. Ian Stewart had "Does God play dice?" (Any bets
on who chose "The God Delusion"?) And now we have a phenomenon that's been
named "God's fingerprint"... no doubt books to follow, if they haven't
already ... of course the idea is in most cases probably to use "God" as
someone here recently suggested to mean "the Universe" (or
Multi/Mega/Omni/Uber-verse, as the case may be). And to sell more copies of
course.
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