On Wed, 10 Sep 2008 01:33:15 GMT, throopw@
sheol.org (Wayne Throop)
wrote:
>: malenor@
gmail.com
>: These two books, authored by James P. Hogan, should be limited to a
>: much younger crowd, and anybody older than say 25 who thinks to
>: critique them seriously in physicist terms is wasting his time
>: and our time.
>
>So basically, you're saying it's fine to claim there's doubt and
>uncertainty about certain conclusions, and heap scorn on anybody
>who thinks there isn't, as long as the intended audience isn't
>old enough to know better.
You're dropping context. The OP didn't think there was anything to
these books and is not a Velikovsky fan, so I am criticizing him (not
James P. Hogan or Velikovsky) for bothering to take Hogan to task
when, in fact, the physics is offered at the level of a 12-year-old's
mentality. As the OP pointed out, Hogan did not attempt to prove how
any of the physics is possible. To paraphrase the OP, events in the
book "happened just because they happened."
Paraphrasing the OP's way of thinking, if Hogan wants to take on the
scientific establishment (bashing it through the sci-fi genre of all
things) he needs to do better than offer base assertions. For example,
Hogan does not explain how some gaseous elements from Jupiter managed
to coalesce into a rocky body. Hogan does not explain why these
gaseous elements did not simply fly apart and vanish into interstellar
dust. Hogan does not explain how this rocky body, somehow emanating
from a gaseous planet due to some collision, managed to weave through
the various gravitational forces in the solar system and eventually
intersect Earth's orbit.
It is all fantasy with a pseudo-scientific basis, and there is no
reason to think otherwise. There is hardly any threat to the
scientific establishment (or "bureaucracy") from either author of
books aimed at a 12-year-old's immature mind-set. If I was concerned
with Hogan or Velikovsky I wouldn't have criticized the OP in the
first place for bothering to post on usenet about such drivel and thus
in his way lending mere drivel the appearance of respectability.
--
" If I had remembered that the name 'Galt' appears
in one of her books, I would have chosen a different
name for my character."
Stephen R. Donaldson, "Gradual Interview"
