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The Grand Design (Hardback)
Short Description for The Grand DesignWhen 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 for a benevolent creator who set things in motion? Or does science offer another explanation? This title presents the scientific thinking about the mysteries of the universe.
Full description- Publisher: BANTAM PRESS
- Published: 09 September 2010
- Format: Hardback 208 pages
- See: Full bibliographic data
- Categories: Science: General Issues | Popular Science
- ISBN 13: 9780593058299 ISBN 10: 0593058291
- Sales rank: 2,717
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Reviews for The Grand Design
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Philosophy is dead. Is logic dead also
Philosophy is dead. Is Logic dead also?
How did the scientists come to know that an entire universe could come out of nothing? Or, how did they come to know that anything at all could come out of nothing? Were they present at that moment when the universe was being born? As that was not the case at all, therefore they did not get that idea being present at the creation event. Rather they got this idea being present here on this very earth. They have created a vacuum artificially, and then they have observed that virtual particles (electron-positron pairs) are still appearing spontaneously out of that vacuum and then disappearing again. From that observation they have first speculated, and then ultimately theorized, that an entire universe could also come out of nothing. But here their entire logic is flawed. These scientists are all born and brought up within the Christian tradition. Maybe they have downright rejected the Christian world-view, but they cannot say that they are all ignorant of that world-view. According to that world-view God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. So as per Christian belief-system, and not only as per Christian belief-system, but as per other belief-systems also, God is everywhere. So when these scientists are saying that the void is a real void, God is already dead and non-existent for them. But these scientists know very well that non-existence of God will not be finally established until and unless it is shown that the origin of the universe can also be explained without invoking God. Creation event is the ultimate event where God will have to be made redundant, and if that can be done successfully then that will prove beyond any reasonable doubt that God does not exist. So how have they accomplished that job, the job of making God redundant in case of creation event? These were the steps:
1) God is non-existent, and so, the void is a real void. Without the pre-supposition that God does not exist, it cannot be concluded that the void is a real void.
2) As virtual particles can come out of the void, so also the entire universe. Our universe has actually originated from the void due to a quantum fluctuation in it.
3) This shows that God was not necessary to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going, as because there was no creation event.
4) This further shows that God does not exist.
So here what is to be proved has been proved based on the assumption that it has already been proved. Philosophy is already dead for these scientists. Is it that logic is also dead for them? by Udaybhanu Chitrakar -
A superficial book
This book was a big disappointment. Written by one of the most brilliant theoretical physics of our time, Stephen Hawking, together with Leonard Mlodinow (also known as a science popularizer), one would expect much better.
The book is superficial and without a strong guideline. Theories such as Inflation, Relativity and String Theory/M-Theory are only briefly and superficially described. Quantum Mechanics is described in a little more detail, but only in the light of Feynman's "sum of all stories" interpretation.
Based on Feynman's "sum of all histories" model, Hawking brings up the Multiverse model, but in a confusing way, that leaves you questioning whether Hawking believes in "real" (existing) multiple universes or if those multiple universes are only mathmatical identities - histories of the "sum of all histories" Feynman's model applied to Universe as a quantum entity.
Based on the "sum of all histories" model, applied to the Universe, Hawking seems to defend the strong anthropic principle: the universe is the way we see it, because by observing it, we eliminate all the histories that would lead to a different universe, and so we are left with just a few histories of the universe which, using Feynman's path integral, would lead to the universe we observe.
Hawking finishes the book by strongly defending that the M-theory is the only candidate to the complete physics theory, even though he gave no strong arguments why M-theory is, to start with, a good theory - and, even less, why it is better or even the only one. It looks as if the main goal of Hawking was to declare M-theory as the theory to be considered in the next years, and the 160 pages that preceded that declaration were nothing but an incoherent set of excuses for that final declaration.
However, I can't say that I learnt nothing from this book, because there was a new thing (at least to me): the "Game of Life", by John Conway. This is a (computer) model of a two-dimension rule where, with a few simple (fundamental) rules, we can see it generating structure and (apparent) complex laws. This maybe the (almost) perfect analogy on why we should, in the midst of all the complexity of the universe, try to find simple (more fundamental) laws and explanations (even though Hawking does not say it with so many words). This almost saved the book... by Rui Antunes
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