STEPHEN HAWKING AND EUROPEAN TAXPAYERS

When European taxpayers realized that, in order for Stephen Hawking to
get the Nobel prize, a 9 billion Large Hadron Collider should be
built, they gave the money without fuss - European taxpayers would
give everything for the development of the ideas of Stephen Hawking,
Stephen King and Harry Potter.

The problem is that, while developing his ideas, Stephen Hawking might
have been misled by the ideas of Sir Arthur Eddington, and this Sir
Arthur Eddington is by no means the most honest scientist in the
history of science:

http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/bot.html
Stephen Hawking: "This argument about whether or not the universe had
a beginning, persisted into the 19th and 20th centuries. It was
conducted mainly on the basis of theology and philosophy, with little
consideration of observational evidence. This may have been
reasonable, given the notoriously unreliable character of cosmological
observations, until fairly recently. The cosmologist, Sir Arthur
Eddington, once said, 'Don't worry if your theory doesn't agree with
the observations, because they are probably wrong.' But if your theory
disagrees with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is in bad trouble.
In fact, the theory that the universe has existed forever is in
serious difficulty with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The Second
Law, states that disorder always increases with time. Like the
argument about human progress, it indicates that there must have been
a beginning."

Instead of just parroting Sir Arthur Eddington, Stephen Hawking should
have read Jos Uffink, officially the greatest expert on the
foundations of thermodynamics:

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/
Jos Uffink: "The historian of science and mathematician Truesdell made
a detailed study of the historical development of thermodynamics in
the period 1822-1854. He characterises the theory, even in its present
state, as 'a dismal swamp of obscurity' (1980, p. 6) and 'a prime
example to show that physicists are not exempt from the madness of
crowds' (ibid. p. 8) ...Clausius' verbal statement of the second law
makes no sense...All that remains is a Mosaic prohibition; a century
of philosophers and journalists have acclaimed this commandment; a
century of mathematicians have shuddered and averted their eyes from
the unclean... Seven times in the past thirty years have I tried to
follow the argument Clausius offers... and seven times has it blanked
and gravelled me... I cannot explain what I cannot understand....This
summary leads to the question whether it is fruitful to see
irreversibility or time-asymmetry as the essence of the second law. Is
it not more straightforward, in view of the unargued statements of
Kelvin, the bold claims of Clausius and the strained attempts of
Planck, to give up this idea? I believe that Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa was
right in her verdict that the discussion about the arrow of time as
expressed in the second law of the thermodynamics is actually a RED
HERRING."

So in the end Stephen Hawking may not get the Nobel prize and European
taxpayers may stop giving so much money for the development of his
ideas.

Pentcho Valev