One Art Hobson could learn from the other

Two of the contributors to your Opinion Page I like to read are named Art Hobson. One of these, Professor Art Hobson, Ph.D., is an eminent physicist and respected professor emeritus at the University of Arkansas. The other, Mr. Art Hobson, Ph.D., is an amateur military strategist and rationality-challenged, pacifist political hack.

Professor Hobson writes wonderfully cogent explanations of the almost incomprehensible advancements being made in physics, particularly quantum physics and the latest developments in cosmology. As a retired engineer with some sadly dated training in engineering physics, but an active interest in these more theoretical subjects, I enjoy all of Dr. Hobson’s scientific columns, and was especially thrilled with his recent submission concerning gravitational waves. It was a simply brilliant discussion of a singularly difficult and mysterious phenomenon. What great fortune it would be to study physics at the feet of such a teacher.

Mr. Hobson, on the other hand, often offers his pacifist nostrums without the slightest nod toward evidence or fact of any kind. For example, in a recent piece on North Korea, he writes, if there is a war in North Korea and a million people die “civilization might not survive such a violent human and economic blow.” Certainly, one should, without seeming to be cavalier toward the theoretical death of a million people, be able to admit the fact that the actual death of an estimated 80 million human beings in the two world wars of the 20th century occurred without a subsequent collapse of civilization, depending, of course, on one’s definition of the word.

In a further example, Mr. Hobson declares, “A less aggressive U.S. policy could have prevented our present dismal failure.” What “dismal failure?” The failure to prevent a nuclear North Korea? If I’m not mistaken, that particular failure occurred under the policies of the previous administration, which could scarcely be considered “aggressive.”

In a third example of irrationality, Mr. Hobson proposes that the U.S. allow North Korea to complete its development program and become the ninth nuclear power and, almost in the same breath, argues for the total banishment of nuclear weapons from Earth. Perhaps it would help even more if we just go ahead and encourage Iran as well to complete their nuclear development and become the 10th nuclear power. The non-nuclear millennium would surely follow.

One suspects that if Mr. Hobson found himself in Professor Hobson’s class and tried to argue a physics theory with such shaky logic, he would be sharply rebuked, at the very least. Although I disagree with most of its tenets, pacifism is a respectable philosophy with much to offer in these discussions, and it deserves a more thorough apologia than Mr. Hobson has provided. Perhaps Professor Hobson could give it a try. BILL MALLETT Garfield