{‘The Black Cloud’: Science and Art}[18th August 1990]

[Redbook7:222-223][19900818:1407b]{‘The Black Cloud’: Science and Art}[18th August 1990]

19900818.1407

[continued]

Re-reading Fred Hoyle’s ‘The Black Cloud’ after many years was interesting. I had an uneasy feeling after writing [2] that I might have unconsciously borrowed from Hoyle, but found that I had no copy of my own; this second-hand copy shows that there are similarities, but only of the kind which are to be found in books on broadly similar themes written in the same culture at the same time.

What stands out from the book* is how little scientists such** as Hoyle understand the inspirational ‘counter-culture’ to which they act as both consumers and (as in this case) occasional producers. The interest of an insight into the mind of a leading astronomer (even if his major cosmological argument*** is now generally discredited) does not altogether compensate for the fact that this is a very poorly written book to be produced by a man of Hoyle’s intelligence (I also wish he’d explained his geometry a bit more, cf p[age] 24 in Penguin first edition).****

I have the feeling that by enjoying music, reading Thucydides, and scoring off politicians, Hoyle thinks that his numerate scientist# proves himself to be some sort of superman. But his appreciation of these matters appears to be even less than mine, and that’s no basis for claims of cultural superiority. Fortunately, Hoyle does have a sense of humour about it, revealed in one or two flashes....

*[ie presumably ‘The Black Cloud’, not [2]]

**[ie ‘how little such scientists as Hoyle’; Hoyle was not so far as this writer is aware, a little scientist...]

***[ie the Steady State theory, as an alternative to the Big Bang theory]

****His conclusions seem to lack a distance on the diagram. Hoyle’s workings, to a non-mathematician, switch from the obvious to the incomprehensible, which is not a bad description of mathematics itself (to the non-math[e]m[atician], at any rate).

#[in ‘The Black Cloud’, presumably]

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