The Forces That Wonder
About The Universe Have Grown Shorter By A Head-Physics Made Easy-Kind Of
-Wizard Stephen Hawkings Passes At 76
By Frank Jackman
I have always been
stricken by that commentary by narrator Nick on the last page of F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s seminal The Great Gatsby
where he speculates about an earlier
virgin time in the Long Island Sound where the greatest part of the action takes
place (kind of virgin although Native Americans were plentiful on the ground in
the area). The time when the lusty, thirty, grubbing Dutch sailors saw the land
for the first time which sparked their sense of wonder-wonder at what lay before
them in the new land. Well in the 21st century, 20th too
where he came of age of wonder the discovery of land held fewer sources of
wonder and so the whole universe became the source of wonder, of speculation about
what was ahead for Stephen J. Hawkings who passed away recently at the age of 76 after a very long and tough fight to stay
alive with a rare debilitating condition.
Not silly wonder like
some schoolboy, not the wonder of “alternative facts” and damn lies but the
wonder created by the scientific method which honored, valued, hell lived for
facts AND theories based on hard plausible facts about what made the cosmos
turn the way its turns. Here is the big score, here is where he stood head and shoulders
above many others in the same profession, the same wonder business. Brother
Hawkings made some very tough dollars of facts understandable to those not in
the “fraternity.” Well kind of-okay. Who will take up his standard. For now
though RIP, Brother Hawkings, RIP.
