Hawkins started it.......and that's a FACT

[Dover]

Hawking started it

Dylan Evans
Thursday March 10, 2005
The Guardian

During the 1990s there was a minor revolution in the publishing industry: books about science became popular. They never overtook fiction, of course, and never succeeded in taking more than a small share of the non-fiction market. But, within its own modest terms of reference, science writing did experience a period of substantial growth.
It all started with Stephen Hawking, whose first popular book, A Brief History of Time, hit the bookshops in 1988. Very soon, others (myself included) jumped on the bandwagon, and popular science soon gained its own section in many bookshops.

With the boom, inevitably, there came a torrent of rubbish. The stylistic innovations of the trendsetters soon became, in the hands of the disciples, stale recipes, recycled over and over in formulaic and uninspiring ways. Even the titles began to seem repetitive: The Panda's Thumb, Galileo's Finger, Einstein's Brain ... What a pity nobody had the chutzpah to write a book about Newton's penis.

A decade and a half later, there are signs that the popular science boom is running out of steam. Unlike scientists, the public has a limited appetite for facts. That is, to my mind, a healthy state of affairs. The eternal curiosity of the scientist may appear touching, like the enthusiasm of a schoolboy for collecting conkers, but what is cute in a child is often quite pathological in an adult.

Nobody could put it better than Oscar Wilde. In his essay The Decay of Lying, he decries what he calls the "monstrous worship of facts". There is something truly monstrous about scientific curiosity because it seems to extend to facts something they do not deserve. Facts must be respected but never worshipped....cont'd

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/science/story/0,12996,1434051,00.html

[roguevalley]

1. Too bad. I love science books, I also love Oscar Wilde, the wench.

[benburch]

2. Hey! "The Panda's Thumb" was a great book!

And it was one of the central essays in the book.

Gould is deceased now, and this fellow ought to have laid off him.

[enki23]

13. funny he didn't mention "bully for brontosaurus"

.

[Emboldened Chimp]

3. "The public has a limited appetite for facts."

Perhaps this explains the increasing interest in faith?

[punpirate]

4. Much like the leaders we've had...

... since Reagan.... "Facts are stupid things," said the amnesiac president.... :)

[Dover]

6. Worshipping facts is a kind of faith isn't it?

//

[enki23]

12. are you trying to be cute?

define "worship."

[fasttense]

5. Facts are bad? People who look for facts are annoying children?

What about journalists aren't they suppose to be looking for the facts? the truth? the real events? What about detectives and investigators aren't they suppose to be looking for the facts, the truth? I don't agree with Oscar. I want the facts, I want the truth. I don't find people who search for the facts to be annoying. I admire them and respect them. Too bad there aren't more of them, despite the FACT that some people don't want to hear the truth.

I can put the facts together for myself. I don't want scientist and journalist trying to persuade me about their opinions of the facts. Just the facts mam.

[glitch]

7. Carl Sagan started it. nt

[htuttle]

9. I agree

Cosmos, then Broca's Brain, Dragons of Eden, etc...

Cosmos started it all.

[Igel]

8. Asimov. n/t

[JitterbugPerfume]

10. the truth will set you free

sigh

[enki23]

11. sadie?

and as for this person's spiel here... all i can say is "wtf?" clearly this idiot has no idea what he/she is talking about, except the basic testable reality that the public isn't much interested in actual knowledge.

and that, is, er... a "good thing" i guess.

this is why the populace remains stupid, and easily led.