Hawking and the search for reality

The Guardian (September 14, 2010) has a delightful little piece: “Digested read: The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow”: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/13/digested-read-grand-design-hawking ­-- I do not know how fair the ‘digest’ is to the book, but still I think I can safely venture to say that the troube with Hawking and all scientifically-moulded intellects is that they cannot get the simple insight of Socrates: no amount of objective investigation, no amount of objective speculation, can get us to the inside of what is outside of us. No science can give us the Why or the ultimate What of anything. The ultimate Why and the ultimate What only have relevance to what is of the mind and is in the mind. We can only ‘know’ what is outside us from the outside; the only understanding open to us is understanding of what is of us, in us, and we are denying outselves that by looking outwards, thinking that is the only Where of ‘reality’. But I have been saying all of this over and over and over again, and I am wasting my breath as much as Hawking seems to have been wasting his.

D. R. Khashaba
September 14, 2010.