Isn't that like saying that mathematics is dead because [some] mathematicians haven't kept up with modern . um. astrophysics?
N From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2011 1:02 PM To: Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris I just looked at the book review for Hawking and Mlodinow's book The Grand Design: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/45515 Although the book might be interesting, I was caught up by the statement Philosophy is Dead! Quote: The Grand Design begins with a series of questions: "How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves?", "How does the universe behave?", "What is the nature of reality?", "Where did all this come from?" and "Did the universe need a creator?". As the book's authors, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, point out, "almost all of us worry about [these questions] some of the time", and over the millennia, philosophers have worried about them a great deal. Yet after opening their book with an entertaining history of philosophers' takes on these fundamental questions, Hawking and Mlodinow go on to state provocatively that philosophy is dead: since philosophers have not kept up with the advances of modern science, it is now scientists who must address these large questions. Odd. -- Owen
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