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From: Manuel Barrera:
" It is, as Dr. Hawking said, “broadly true.” But at the risk of coming
off as cranky nerd, I wish the moviemakers had been able to hew to a
higher authority."
Well, I am sure you didn't mean God as a "higher authority", Louis. I
plan to see this film because I am intrigued by Hawking's life as a
person with disabilities--a quintessential example how a disability does
not mean unable and how people with disabilities are actually more like
than they are unlike "the rest of us".
Like "Lincoln", such films should be enjoyed not for their merit as work
of scholarship, but for raising the seemingly unapproachable to art,
accessible and to be marvelled for their portrayal of human activity.
Hawking, like Einstein, and Newton (among many others), may actually end
up wrong in some respects. I am reminded of a recent article that Louis
shared a few months back from Scientific American,
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2014/08/21/quantum-gravity-expert-says-philosophical-superficiality-has-harmed-physics/?WT.mc_id=send-to-friend,in
which physicist, Carlo Rovelli, describes his disagreements with Hawking
and others on the "superficiality" of quantum gravitics theory,
especially "string theory".
I am attending this film despite my serious misgivings about the
seemingly pat acceptance of Hawking's--like Einstein's before
him--theories, which in the pursuit of science will always be disputable
as a matter of course; precisely because it is, after all, science and
not religion (I also note that today there are reports how the new Pope
has declared his support of evolutionary theory because he believes
religion is not "magic").
I am intrigued by Hawking's story--knowing it will just be "broadly
true". It is just too bad that many will, again like "Lincoln", get
their taste of actual science from realistic equations and dramatized
license with actual events. However, this latter problem, a real and
"interesting" problem, is one that the conscious rest of us must attend.
In the real world.
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