Dead Dogs Dicks

Title: “A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing”

Author: Lawrence M. Krauss

Rank: 26

Blurb: “In a cosmological story that rivets as it enlightens, pioneering theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss explains the groundbreaking new scientific advances that turn the most basic philosophical questions on their heads.”

Review: “The book is plagued by !’s every page or paragraph indicating, presumably, the author’s excitement at stating another exciting but improbable fact (unless you are a cosmologist like the author!). As any journalist knows these ‘dead dogs dicks’ are evidence of bad writing as they indicate an inability to relay the excitement in the statement of facts — you shouldn’t need to telegraph to the reader that what they have just read is exciting. If you have to do that then you have failed as a writer, if not as a physicist.”

Customers Also Bought: “The Physics of Star Trek” by Lawrence M. Krauss

Footnote: Any philosophical question that can be answered by science is not a philosophical question.

A Universe from Nothing [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon Kickback Link]

13 Comments

Footnote: Any philosophical question that can be answered by science is not a philosophical question.

Funny, the Logical Positivists believed that any question that could not be answered by science was not actually a real question. It was a string of words with grammatical form that conveyed no actual information, i.e. Is the beautiful more identical than the good.

@Serolf Divad: “What is the life worth living?”

If I see one more dog’s dick, I am going to scream!

For those of you just tuning in, Wittgenstein’s role in the history of philosophy was to conclusively prove logical positivism, then to conclusively demonstrate that it’s all bullshit.

@nojo: Their central idea about what is true failed when tested by its own terms. Oops!

@Dodgerblue: I had a grad-school friend who argued that any philosophical analysis of humor would fail unless it was also funny.

@nojo: I like that. I’d like to see Ludwig’s take on The Three Stooges.

@Dodgerblue: “Stand roughly there.” Followed by a pie in the face.

I’m going to scream and throw myself out the window. If there is a window. And I can define what I mean by ‘I’. Or how do you solve a problem like Maria.

@Benedick: Why does mathematics describe things in the empirical world? Huh? It doesn’t need to. This is the question that drove my interest in that most unmarketable of degrees, philosophy.

@al2o3cr: Wittgenstein was a beery swine.

Also, the best seminars take place in taverns.

If I wanted to think I’d go to wonkette.

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