Stephen Hawking Passes Away
 

Sad news.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43396008

Yes a brilliant man, sadly missed.

R.I.P.

Brilliant mathematician in his younger years.

Cambridge University just released what now is probably Hawking's last message to people, life and the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrVVvXOIwQc

He was one of the greatest minds, but always tried to explain things in an understandable way. A short history of time is still one of the must reads.
As they say, a beautiful mind. May you rest in peace.

May he rest in peace. :cry:

A truly amazing visionary gentleman.

RIP

R.I.P.!

R.I.P...... Sigh

Gary

R.I.P. Mr. Hawking.:salute:

R.I.P Mr. Hawkings. Thank you for being an inspiration.

Markus

A great man who helped further the progress of mankind. We are all indebted.

A fighter too. At something like 21 he was given 2 years to live because of the motor neuron disease. Made it to 76. And it can't have been easy living like that.

Thank you Stephen Hawking.

welcome aboard!
 

Hawking was not a believer, brilliant mind for many, but not for me ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.33a9d80f52a3

Considering the thought of some in the fields of quantum theory and nuclear physics even our bodies are more ethereal than real.
The brain may stop working but it doesn't in anyway mean your state of awareness dies with it. Something along the lines of just because you smash the radio reciever (brain) doesn't in anyway affect the radio waves (consciousness).

But alas only Mr. Hawkings know the truth of the matter.

We have no sign or indication whatever that self-awareness, mind, can exist without a carrier that we usually identify to be a brain, at least some form of neural-like network of sufficient minimum complexity. Anything beyond that is mere speculation, and unfounded claim only.

NDEs (near death experiences, something that was alongside thanatology once a field I somewhat specialised in) also reveal no real indication for any state of mind existing beyond material life, and deal with states close to being dead, being almost dead for longer time, and the subjective quality of the experience of dying - but not being dead for sure, once and forever.

When Siddharta Gautama was asked wheter or not there is a subjective quality in individual mind that exists beyond our death, he clearly said No. Whch did not stop many people from nevertheless mixing up his explanations of Athman and An-Athman and trying to read into this that there is a wandering of the individual "soul" that survives the individuum's death. Still, Buddha beyond doubt and crystal-clearly rejected this idea.

Philosophy. Its no science, its all imaginery escapism to make our lack of control over the basic and profoud uncertainty of our life more bearable (or even the opposite, if nihilism is more up to your taste). We do not like the outlook of us being unimportant in the greater scheme of things, and being helpessly exposed to cosmological powers and developments on which we have not he smallest influence. We are afraid, like little kids learning to swim and thinking they are safe as long as they keep a grab of the swimming basin's rim. But that is no swimming.

Many traditions and cultures had socalled books of the dead, most wellknown are the Egytian Book of Toth, and the Tibetan Bardo Thödol. But these books in principle are books about how to live. You cannot live freely if you all the time are afraid of death. But you cannot overcome fear of death if not mastering the art of living. In the end, both belong together, and in a way are one and the same. Its our sense of individuality only that makes us afraid. And this is what the Buddhist concept of Athman and Anathman is about, too: individual self, and greater non-self.

Or in the words of Hawkings: don't just look all the time to the ground before your feet, but look up to the stars, and wonder. And as somebody once said to me when I was still at school: the span of our lives is the same, no matter whether we spend it laughing or crying.

Not even science has an answer if or where consciousness resides within the brain. Until either of us find it neither camp has proof one way or the other of what lies ahead. Buddha and Hawking having as you say no doubt and crystal-clearly rejecting the idea that the mind persists after the death of the body. Has just as much scientific basis as Mr. Quatro's suggestion that it does. Both are philosophical answers to philosophical questions.

What science does know is that specific regions of the brain are well known to be devoted to the processing of speech and vision. The paths of the incoming data have been for the most part identified. The puzzle is in the replay. There is no hint in the brain of how you hear or see what you have heard or seen. There is no sound in your brain. Put a stethoscope anywhere in the brain and all that is heard is the gurgling of the blood as it moves through the vessels. No voices, no music but I hear voices and music. But where is an unknown. The identical biochemical reactions that in one part of the brain store inputs related to the sounds we hear, in another location of the brain record the sights we see. But it is all chemistry and even more perplexing, it's all the same chemistry. And yet from this chemistry emerge the immeasurably different sensations of sound and sight. But where are they? The pat answer is that we perceive these chemical reactions as sound and sight. Obviously that is how we perceive the chemistry. The location of that perception is the puzzle. If consciousness resides within the brain it is very well hidden.

Sharing some thoughts of other scientists

“Everything is Information”. - John Wheeler

"Inherent difficulties of the materialist theory (of existence) have appeared very clearly in the development of physics during the 20th century. This difficulty relates to the question whether the smallest units of matter such as atoms (of which we and all objects are composed) are ordinary physical objects, whether they exist in the same way as stones or flowers. Here quantum theory has created a complete change in the situation.... The smallest units of matter are, in fact not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word.; they are, in Plato's sense, ideas." - Werner Heisenberg

"It has occurred to me lately I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities that both questions (the origin of consciousness in humans and of life from nonliving matter) might be brought into some degree of congruence. This is with the assumption that mind, rather than emerging as a late growth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality - the stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff. It is mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create science, art, and technology. ... " - George Wald in Life and Mind in the Universe (http://elijahwald.com/lifeandmind.html)

“So in brief, we do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We, (our personal awareness of being ourselves), are not part of it. We are outside. We are only spectators. The reason why we believe that we are in it, that we belong to the picture, is that our bodies are in the picture.... And this is our only way of communicating with them. - Erwin Schroedinger

"We are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail mind as the creator and governor of the realm of matter." - Sir James Jean

Bottom line - physical universe does not physically exist, Except as phantom probability distributions. Only thing that is "real" is consciousness. - Youtube's Dr. Quantum ;)

Now for my 'Budda moment' It has been said "With wisdom Yehovah created the heavens and the earth"(Gen. 1:1). The Torah informs me, and as Wald, Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Jeans, Wheeler and Dr. Quantum have come to confirm, that wisdom (skeptics may wish to substitute here the scientifically acceptable term “information" is substrate, the basis, of existence. Mind is as fundamental to our universe as are time and space.

My brain hurts

Then get out of your chair.....:shucks: