First, when their body stops functioning. Second, when their body is buried (or cremated). And the third and final death is when their name is uttered for the very last time in human history.
I am fairly confident Stephen Hawking will have only died two deaths.
1) When your body dies 2) When you the last person who remembers you dies 3) When the last thing you impacted is gone
Now existence has returned to a state as if you had never been at all.
If we put Sagan with Darwin we should not forget to add Margulis to this list also.
I’d go so far as to say that SET changed my worldview. I’d always looked at evolution solely through the cold, brütal lens of selective pressure and competition.
SET showed us, however, that symbiosis (i.e. fundamental cooperation) is right up there with competition... kind of a countervailing force within the story of evolution.
I don’t know why, but I take great emotional comfort in that. Perhaps, being non-religious, it allows me to see something humane(?) encoded in the rulesets that govern change.
I wanted to say: connect him, obviously
He is one of the very rare human beings whose names will never be forgotten.