Hawking- Downfall of an Icon

Provocative, Intriguing, Revolutionary. Such terms correspond to his very psyche, his articulation, his intellectual regard and rigor. As a youngster, I still recall my thirst for his excellence, quenching it with pages upon pages of his work, transcripts of his encounters with the public and his blockbuster publications. The once highly regarded authority in his specialty, Stephen Hawking was the preeminent icon, a down-right representation of the progressive stances within  Theoretical Physics and the seemingly non-existent limitations of human physiology. I quoted, honoured and recalled his ground-breaking remarks and was motivated by his flattering psyche. Hawking has earned a combination of credibility, vilification and criticism for his recent movements. His publication of bestseller popular-science texts such as his famed A Brief History of Time, baffled and provoked positive reception for the multitude of claims made by modern physics. Although confined to the custody of a wheel-chair and the articulation of speech through the aid of a computer as a result of his neurodegenerative disorder, he has earned colleagues and critics probing the debates over some prominent metaphysical and theological conundrums. Hawking professes no belief in the existence or role of God or a divine being in the creation of the universe rather is dependant on the wealth of scientific claims made by his successors and predecessorsThe critically and logically minded surely questions to legitimacy of Hawking’s conjectures in his recent publication, The Grand Design. What drives such individuals of intellectual prestige to reject the faculties of logic and reasoning endowed to them seems far-fetched, particularly for the prospect that such faculties are paramount to their work, study and research. I am not critical of individuals that reject to manifest or profess a belief in a deity as the overlooker and creator of the universe, rather am deeply critical of individuals that maroon their humility and exchange it for an over-inflated ego. Hawking is more than a narcissist, he is a thinker lost in the realm he crafted from his own thought, a philosopher bamboozled by his own philosophy and a voyager on the threshold of the wrong route. It makes one quite queasy, to respect and commemorate a figure that has crafted nearly every facet of his personality, let alone his wisdom, exoteric and esoteric and then eventually scrutinise his mentalityHawking has that twist of panache that is unique in form and function. A persistence that defies the malady endowed upon him. But Hawking holds a shortcoming just as any physicist with a theoretical orientation, the composition of a Unified Field Theory, the very holy grail of popular-science, yet to be conquered. For better or worse, Hawking remains to Theoretical Physics what Homer was to Greek and what Chaucer was to English. A figure of eloquence coupled with a lust for scientific truth, a defiant psyche priming himself to conquer the unconquerable.