Book review: The Grand Design, by Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking has done it again.

He has provided the world with a state-of-the-universe update that ties together the latest thinking in language that is so deceptively simple, you end up believing you know more than you do (or ever could).

Hawking asks the biggest of the questions (Why are we here? What is reality?) and gives the straightest of answers, free of proselytising.

Of course, some of it is always going to be tricky. While I am proficient in a back-of-envelope kind of way about cutting edge physics, quantum mechanics is just plain bonkers and no mortal should have the right to understand its implications.

Hawking admits that as scientists delve further into the fabric of the universe, it becomes increasingly inelegant. Model-dependent realism is just a very human workaround.

Ultimately, we may not have the intellectual capacity to comprehend the multiverse and, judging from the frayed theories and clumsy maths, we certainly do not have the symbolic language or philosophical architecture to make it beautiful.

As for the God thing, yer takes yer money. Hawking argues that a deity is no longer necessary but such is the sheer incalculable unlikeliness of our existence that there will always be room for the faithful.


– From October 2010