1/n According to numerous colleagues on Twitter, Nobel Laureate physicist Steven Weinberg has died. He was a towering intellect. I'm sure much of the coverage to come will focus on his contributions to science, but (cont'd) (Photo: Jeff Wilson/The Guardian) 
2/ ...he was also a first-rate science communicator. His books, and his essays in the @nybooks, were illuminating and authoritative, regardless of the topic.
3/ This is perhaps the most famous -- or infamous? -- thing that he wrote:
4a/ That was from The First Three Minutes (1977). Sixteen years later, in Dreams of a Final Theory, he wrote of the legacy of that statement:
4b/
5/ In a similar vein, I remember a conference held at the National Museum of Natural History in the late 90s, called "Was the Universe Designed?" Weinberg's presentation had a one word title: "No." :-)
6/ Apparently Weinberg's essays in the New York Review are paywalled; but if you have a subscription, there's a mountain of fabulous material in there -- like his essay "The Trouble With Quantum Mechanics" from a few years ago: nybooks.com/articles/2017/…
7/ Weinberg's 2015 book, "To Explain the World," was interesting. It looked at the history of modern science, especially the Copernican revolution. While many historians of science eschew "whig history," Weinberg believed is was legit, at least... (cont'd)
8/ ...at least when talking about the history of science. Why? Because in science, unlike other fields, there is (he argues) an actual right and wrong, and some ideas are closer to the truth than others. As he put it in the NYRB:
9/ I interviewed Weinberg around the time that book came out, for @QuantaMagazine; you can read that Q&A here: quantamagazine.org/steven-weinber… (cont'd)
10/ I really enjoyed our wide-ranging chat: We talked about the history of science, the quest for a unified theory of #physics, the possibility of a Multiverse, and what (if anything) #philosophy might contribute to physics.
11/ The issue of "beauty" in physics has long sparked controversy. But Weinberg believed that beauty could point the way toward truth. This is how he put it in 1994:
12/ Weinberg had no patience for claims of "relativism" -- not the Einstein kind, but the "science is just a human construct" kind. Here is what he said about it (again, from 1994):
13/ Today, a tribute to Steven Weinberg from the university where he taught for nearly four decades -- @UTAustin. Weinberg passed away yesterday at the age of 88. news.utexas.edu/2021/07/24/ut-…
14a/ A decade or so before I interviewed Weinberg for Quanta, I interviewed him for CBC Radio; I was working on a documentary pegged to the 400th anniversary of Galileo aiming a telescope at the night sky...
14b/ We had a terrific discussion, examining the issue of (apparent?) "design" in the universe, the relationship between science and religion -- in Galileo's time and also today (S.W. was a pretty hard-core atheist), and much more...
14c/ The transcript runs for 11 pages, and I have the original digital MiniDisk, too. Going to dive in and see what's there; I remember he said a lot of interesting things!
15/ Obituary for Steven Weinberg by Ken Miller of the Associated Press. Includes quotes from @seanmcarroll and @bgreene: thestar.com/news/world/202…
16/ "Physics Loses a Titan." @tom_siegfried examines Steven Weinberg's legacy for @ScienceNews: sciencenews.org/article/steven… #StevenWeinberg #physics
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