Bøger af Hilton Ratcliffe

"Stephen Hawking Smoked My Socks is a prism-free lens with which forgotten basic skills in objectivity are seen again, and the innate art of existence is set free from the dictates of fear and power." - Ian Campbell-Gillies Why did Stephen Hawking become so famous? What exactly brought world renown to Albert Einstein? Why are those particular individuals household names across the globe whilst other achievers are not; why have they become icons to rival film stars; and why they are adored and protected by a fiercely loyal fan base? In Stephen Hawking Smoked My Socks, Hilton Ratcliffe seeks out the answers to those questions, and discovers that they have nothing at all to do with science.

Heresy: The declaration of opinions contrary to prevailing doctrine; opposition to dogma; unorthodox approach to science; method employed by one's intellectual enemy; behaviour characteristic of a crank. In the course of using essential theories of science in my decades-long attempt to demystify the heavens, I became increasingly frustrated by ideas that just didn't harmonise. If we were uncovering the truth, I reasoned, then the component parts devised by disparate specialists should dovetail neatly together. But they don't. Classical Newtonian Mechanics doesn't see eye-to-eye with Einstein's Relativity; both are sneered at by Quantum Mechanics. Theories highly successful in their own right seemed when compared with one another to be describing different universes. That was a train-smash, both for me and for the progress of science, as I understood it. This book is an account of that crisis. But fear not, it's not a high-tech science report for über-geeks. It's a storybook filled with myth and adventure. It's science unplugged. Take your time. This heresy will change your life. Hilton Ratcliffe, Astronomer with a Mental Squint.