Traveling Back In Time...

[Rugbypup]

I have read Hawking..
He doesn't actually say yes.
He has actually flip flopped on some of his ideas,... but the most important thing to note about Hawking and other scientists of his ilk is that they are perfectly capable of acknowledging that their theories are entirely provisional and unproven.
Hawking has actually written on the subject of the conceptual nature of current scientific models.


Folks who think dark matter is proven, or that Time provably exists, or that there is such a thing as the multi-verse are, quite simply, ignorant to what science actually does and does not claim.

Strings and extra dimensions are, until proven, no different than coming up with a mathematics of Pixies and sasquatches to explain the invisible universe...
If your Pixie theory actually predicts observation you can claim to have a VALID theory... but having a valid theory does not mean that theory is a true reflection of reality. It does not mean there is such a thing as Lift, nor such a thing as a pixie, nor indeed, such a thing as a particle.

Again, not all scientists are agnostics... but all the really good ones are.

having a usefully predicitve narrative about the universe is not the same as knowledge.

Science is black and white, fair enough, but don't discount imagination. Without it, science would not progress. We are where we are today because someone had a great idea.

I guess science and religion have much in common there, we don't know for sure, so we project our best guesses and back it up in faith, if you like.

Though I understand your emphasis on evidence being the existence of actual scientific fact, in fact I agree and that modern SciFi has largely been accepted as fact at times...

...but that's not to say that when a pixie turns up with the blue prints for a TARDIS, that I would be overly surprised. :biggrin1: