The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking (PDF)

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERWhen and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? What is the nature of reality? Is the apparent “grand design” of our universe evidence of a benevolent creator who set things in motion—or does science offer another explanation? In this startling and lavishly illustrated book, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow present the most recent scientific thinking about these and other abiding mysteries of the universe, in nontechnical language marked by brilliance and simplicity. According to quantum theory, the cosmos does not have just a single existence or history. The authors explain that we ourselves are the product of quantum fluctuations in the early universe, and show how quantum theory predicts the “multiverse”—the idea that ours is just one of many universes that appeared spontaneously out of nothing, each with different laws of nature. They conclude with a riveting assessment of M-theory, an explanation of the laws governing our universe that is currently the only viable candidate for a “theory of everything”: the unified theory that Einstein was looking for, which, if confirmed, would represent the ultimate triumph of human reason.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The Grand Design, while still qualifying an helpful general overview of cosmology for nonscientists, is in its essence, a profoundly unpersuasive book about metaphysics, in which Hawking asks the questions:”Why is there something rather than nothing?”Why do we exist?”Why this particular set of laws and not some other?”but refuses to acknowledge the conclusions which his own summary of the evidence should properly lead him to.Specifically, Hawking’s stated goal is to establish that it is at least “possible to answer these questions purely within the realm of science, without invoking any divine beings.” What is remarkable in this formulation is its tacit admission that the evidence for a deliberate design of the universe for the purpose of supporting life has become so overwhelming, the best an atheist such as Hawking (per his ex-wife ) may do is merely to try to prevent the case for a kind of intelligent design to be formally declared made. Remarkably, Hawking fails even in this modest ambition. Even if there are persuasive answers to these questions within the realm of science, they do not emerge from this book.The problem for atheists and agnostics is that, as Hawking forthrightly acknowledges, “Our universe and its laws appear to have a design that is both tailor-made to support us and if we are to exist leaves little room for alteration. This is not easily explained, and raises the natural question of why it is that way.” The chances of the laws of physics having been randomly set to support life seems so astonishingly small as to be for all practical purposes, zero. As Hawking noted in A Brief History of Time “If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang have been smaller by even one part in 100,000 million million, the universe would have re-collapsed before it ever reached its present size.” And this is only one of the 6 rules of physics, the precise setting of which were identified by physicist Martin Rees in his book

⭐as essential to the existence of life. Nor do these 6 numbers include the very peculiar fact that in order for carbon to exist in any appreciable quantities “the sum of the energies of a beryllium nucleus and a helium nucleus must be almost exactly the energy of a certain quantum state of the isotope of carbon formed, a situation called a resonance, which greatly increases the rate of a nuclear reaction”. The odds of this occurring randomly was deemed so small by the man who predicted it that he, Astronomer Fred Hoyle, asserted that “I do not believe that any scientist to examine the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside the stars”. The same inference could just as easily be made regarding the fact that so many other laws of nature seem so precisely calibrated to support life.This is an inference however Hawking declines to make, most likely because “Some would claim that the answers to these questions is that there is a God whose chose to create universe that way.” Unfortunately for those whose world view is premised upon belief in a random and meaningless universe, Hawking’s alternative explanation, as set forth in this book, is completely unpersuasive Briefly, as best I can tell, Hawking’s argument boils down invocation of M-Theory and Feynman’s multiple-histories theory to suggest that there are innumerable alternative universes with different laws of physics, the vast majority of which do not support life, leaving it no more than a matter of random chance at least one does. However, the fact that M-theory allows for this possibility or that multiple-histories, as applied by Hawking, assumes it, offers little actual reason to believe that such alternative universes really do exist.Hawking observes that “The laws of M-theory … allow for different universes with different apparent laws, depending on how the internal spaces curled. M-theory has solutions that allow for many different internal spaces, perhaps as many as 10 to the 500th power which allows for ten to the 500th power different universes, each with its own laws.” And because the M-Theory allows for this enormous amounts of Universes, therefore apparently such Universes must exist, and it is simply our good fortune to live in one of the few numbers of such Universes that allow for life.The problem with this reasoning is it assumes that because the M-theory “allows” for different universes with different laws, that is reason enough to believe they exist. This is a breathtaking logical leap, something akin to saying because the laws of physics allow for the possibility that aliens are abducting human being and harvesting them for their sperm and eggs to create an alien-human hybrid species, therefore they are. However, the mere fact that something is not impossible is not evidence of its existence. The Constitution allows for any child born in the United States (except for the children of diplomats) to become president after the age of 35. Nevertheless, for me to insist that Yemen-based Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki will eventually become President simply because he was born in the United States (not of diplomats) and is over 35 years old is probably not going to convince many people to contribute to his campaign.Hawking’s other argument for the existence of multiple universes is so obviously fallacious that it is remarkable that a man of his extraordinary learning and intelligence could even seriously propose it. He starts off by reasoning from Feynman’s multiple histories theories that no quantum event has a single history, but actually a virtual infinity of histories, and the only way to predict the outcome of any particular quantum event is to sum all the possible events which might occur and divide it in some way to come up with the likelihood of any particular outcome. Thus in describing how photons pass through the slits in the screen in the famous “double slit” experiment, one must take into account the possibility that the photon may have circled around Jupiter before arriving it its final destination. Therefore, Hawking argues, that to determine how the Universe got to its present state, one must sum up all the possible different states it could have begun with, including, apparently, those 10 to the 500th power different possible starting states of the Universe allowed by M theory. Therefore, given the fact that we human beings exist, ultimately when one sums up and divides all these alternative histories, one arrives again at the fact that we are fortunate enough to live up in one of the few (or perhaps only) Universe which allows for our existence.The problem is that this argument simply assumes away the question. To use the alien abduction analogy again, its like saying that the double slit experiment demonstrates that there are human-abducting extraterrestrials because in developing the necessary sums to determine the outcome of the experiment one must take into possibility that a photon travelled to the mothership orbiting the earth and passed through a memorandum setting forth their insidious hybrid insemination scheme. In short, for Hawking’s version of multiple histories to take into consideration multiple alternative universes, it must assume multiple alternative universes exist. Assumptions are not evidence, a legal principle even physicists should be somewhat acquainted with.At the end of the day, the one point which must be conceded to Hawking and other like Richard Dawkins and Martin Rees who rely upon belief in multiple alternative universes to avoid the otherwise inescapable conclusion that the Universe is designed to support life, is that there is no evidence to conclusively demonstrate that such alternative universes do not exist, just as there is no conclusive evidence that human abducting aliens do not exist either. But actually that’s not a fair comparison. There is in fact, at the very least, an immense amount of testimonial evidence of alien abduction. However, there is no evidence at all for the existence of multiple universes merely, as Hawking correctly notes, various (untested) theories which may allow for the possibility of their existence, just as surely as there are in fact far more reliable and tested theories allowing for the possibility of extraterrestrial kidnappers and the future presidency of Imam Al-Awaki.So while Hawking is ultimately correct to assert that it is possible to answer his questions “purely within the realm of science, without invoking any divine beings”, it would have been more candid to add that there is no evidence at all to support the suggested possibilities, while the evidence that the law of physics were precisely calibrated to support life is somewhere between enormous and overwhelming. The fact that Hawking feels compelled to raise such unconvincing arguments for refuting the case for the strong anthropic principle as he does in this book is a testimony to just how desperate non-theists have become in their efforts to deny the obvious.Nevertheless, the book is still well worth reading for its entertaining and informative overview of the current state of cosmology.

⭐This is a review by a layman grappling with the not so self-evident laws of the incredibly small and large physical realities.I read and very much enjoyed Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell although have not come across any of L. Mlodinow’s several popular books on physics and quantum physics.This book is very different from the previous two Hawking books and several other readings on cosmology, all of which attempt to familiarize the lay audience with the intricate principles of modern physics, i.e. the theory of general relativity (GR), quantum mechanics (QM), various flavors of string theory complete with M-theory, and multiverses. Here, most of this knowledge is taken for granted at least on an elementary level. The authors focus instead on the philosophical aspects of the immense new knowledge that has been gained since Maxwell’s formalization of electro-magnetism and Einstein’s concept of space-time fabric. Ancient philosophers, legends of various religious worldviews, and respectful dispute with creationist beliefs make their appearances throughout the engaging narration. On the way to the “theory of everything,” that in the writers’ opinion seems to be the hard-to-swallow concept of M-theory with its 10 spatial dimensions, we meet a few modern principles of acquiring knowledge. One of them is the “top down approach” which makes conclusions about the past based on the present using probability calculations instead of describing universal history as a linear event with a fixed beginning and predetermined outcome. Another is the “anthropic principle” which uses the very existence of humans as an argument in the interpretation of the Universe.The story we are presented with is an unapologetic utilization of the still poorly understood and even less readily imaginable principles of quantum mechanics. According to this worldview, our very existence is due to nothing else but quantum fluctuation in the primordial Universe, when its size was in the range of the Planck length (length of 10 to the negative 35 meters). In the randomness of temperature variations of multiple (10 to the 500!?) imaginable early universes one had just the right conditions, i.e. temperature differences, to be able to form clumps of material, the birthplace of present day galaxies, following the inflation. In fact the small but well documented temperature variation in the cosmic microwave background radiation is thought to be the thumbprint of this primordial quantum fluctuation.It seems to me that by the time galaxies formed, the laws of GR that apparently govern today’s cosmos on a grand scale, overshadowed the principles of QM that dominated the “baby” Universe. Although this “changing of the guards” of the physical laws from QM to GR clearly had to be a continuum, until today even the smartest minds among us have not been able to find a theory that can describe a smooth transition between the two. QM and GR simply do not seem to coexist very well together: using QM laws, the GR equations invariably result in infinite results, the mathematical equivalence of “garbage.” The book however ends on a positive note: M-theory.Although M-theory itself, like all other major concepts of physics in this fairly short book, is only briefly presented, the authors leave little doubt about their current conviction that the theory is a major candidate for Einstein’s unfulfilled dream, the unified theory. To illustrate what the real meaning of a “unified theory” may be, the authors discuss the Game of Life in full seven pages. The essence of the game is to build various structures based on three simple basic laws. These structures – one may look at them as multiverses – will evolve very differently despite the uniformity of the three rules depending on the initial conditions, i.e. how one places the two building blocks (life or death) on the checkered board at the beginning of the game. In the process, various formations are produced that seem to follow certain rules (think of the laws of thermodynamics, Newton’s three laws of motion, etc.) while the underlying three basic rules never change.Of course, M-theory is not without controversies due to the mathematical complexities required to model it and the extremely small size of strings that are thought to be the theory’s building blocks. In fact, the energy necessary to dissect matter to the infinitesimal size of strings and thus make them observable seems to be unattainable. Viewed in this way, the difference between a supernatural creator (God) and M-theory seems to be almost negligible at first glimpse. Although the authors don’t explicitly get tangled in the emotional battle between spirituality and materialism, they provide sufficient circumstantial evidence in the form of reproducible observational data to make a strong intellectual argument that God is not necessary to answer mankind’s ever recurring questions: `Why do we exist? Why is there something rather than nothing?’ and the one question for which you have to be a physicist to ask: “Why this particular set of laws and not some other?”The book is a well-narrated, mostly enjoyable read even for a lay person like myself – someone not involved in the field of physics in any way. I think however that without a basic understanding of GR and QM much of the book’s main premises will fly over a potential reader’s head. The two books by Hawking mentioned at the beginning of this review will certainly be sufficient to appreciate the magical world revealed in The Grand Design: the world of theoretical physics and cosmology hidden from most of us who grew up on Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics.There were only very few places where I felt a touch of too much technicality – e.g. “renormalization” -, or not sufficient clarity – e.g. brief references to “super symmetry”, or the Feynman diagrams. Many of the pictures were intuitive and helpful, although I wish a few of them had more detailed captions – e.g. the figure of Quarks or the Triple Alpha Process. The cartoons were sufficiently witty to contribute to the overall entertaining mood of the book.I would recommend the book to all those interested in cosmology and particle physics, but most of all to those tickled by a natural scientific approach to life’s great philosophical questions and the unquenchable thirst of humans to acquire knowledge.

⭐I love physics, but I got a C in GCSEs, and really that was just because of cosmology and black hole stuff. I just love understanding them without understanding the maths and stuff.This will answer all your questions and don’t be afraid if you get a little lost – download the audiobook, let the author explain it to you. He does a beautiful job.Especially since there are parts I listen to five times before I get it.But science is supposed to be a bit challenging, right?

⭐Certainly it needs reading at least twice to be able to understand the concepts. I am part way through my second reading. This is not a criticism of the authors; that merely reflects the complexity of the subject matter. The authors do a good job explaining difficult ideas.As for the concepts, I cannot help but feel that these are mathematical conveniences rather than physical descriptions. Indeed, the authors hint at this. 10 or 11 dimensions certainly cannot be understood by the normal human mind as being a physical concept. But the mathematical theories actually work in being able to predict occurrences which can then be verified: this is the basis of a sound theory.

⭐If you’re already familiar with relativity and quantum theory then you’ll find the first half of this book is mostly a retelling of those ideas. If you’re not already familiar, then you may find it extremely hard going. The authors attempt to explain in a few pages concepts that other popular science books spend many chapters trying to get across.Interspersed with the theory are various anecdotes of ancient religious myths and some history of the development of cosmological ideas which add colour and interest.The second half of the book brings more recent findings and ideas into the mix. They talk about M theory, strong and weak anthropic principles and how the weirdness of quantum theory can explain the existence of the universe and why it seems fine tuned for us.Once upon a time popular science books took complicated theories and brought them to a lay audience. They still do that and I would argue, better than ever, but I’ve noticed a more frequently occurring dimension. That of religion. A modern day battle is being fought on that front and it seems that not even Stephen Hawking is immune from entering the fray. He argues convincingly that science does not need to postulate a deity to explain anything. Whatever your opinion on that front, I don’t think they labour the point too much and I didn’t feel as though it got in the way of the basic science.So overall I would say that if you are reasonably familiar (at a lay level) with modern physics then this book is a brief but clear and easily understood update. If you’re not then I imagine a lot of the book will be incomprehensible.

⭐A bit of a “curate’s egg” – some parts are well explained and easy to follow while others are obscure and difficult. This is probably because M-theory cannot be explained in simple English and requires complex mathematical formulation to really comprehend (assuming you can understand highly complex formulae!) One criticism is that, despite statements early on in the book about theories being representations of possible truths and not necessarily correct, once we get into M-theory it is presented as being THE TRUTH, albeit with possible refinements still to come. And this despite that fact that many eminent mathematicians and theoretical physicists believe it is anything but the truth. Reader beware, this is metaphysics, not physics.

⭐A well written, albeit fairly short, book; it develops the currently most popular themes in string theory and cosmology. However, it suggests M thory is the answer to everything; it may be – but the theories are not yet fully developed and certainly not yet proven. The level is trivial in places (to anyone who did A-level sciences, say) but conceptually farsighted overall. It lacks any mathematics (a good thing for a popular book) and, as such, is always going to be somewhat superficial – but at this level of theory, that is probably the only approach to take. A good, thought-provoking read; thoroughly recommended.

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