This column first ran in The Tablet in March 2018 When the news agency of the Italian Bishops’ Conference asked me, as Vatican Observatory director, for a statement on the death of Stephen Hawking, I wrote: “Stephen Hawking… was a scientist of remarkable insight who even more remarkably gave a human face to the work of astronomical cosmology.”  The bishops translated my English into Italian, and issued a press release. That release was, in turn, picked up by American newspapers who turned their Italian back into English. Thus the Washington Post had me saying that Hawking was a “scientist of admirable intuition, who knew even more extraordinarily to give a human face to cosmology and to astronomy.” It’s close; but it’s not quite what I said.  This story illustrates a fundamental difficulty we always must face when trying to put human language, be it Italian or English or mathematics, to the task of describing the universe. We will always be … Continue reading →