“The Grand Design”, written by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow is an ambitious book written to plainly and clearly explain the answers to the big questions posed by cosmology and philosophy as posed by recent scientific understanding.
I found the book easy to read and understand. It is certainly clear and concise in its abbreviated explanations of how the universe and life could have come to be, rather than not be. The Authors make great strides to cram much of the understanding of science into a short understandable format, tying together many historical discoveries, axioms and new insights.
Although I found new and exciting ideas and understanding between the covers I also found myself frustrated by a few pronouncements and also confounded by a few ideas that do not find purchase in any model of reality that I am privy to.
One such decree is that “philosophy is dead”, a familiar roar, pronounced in the first chapter. The issue I have with this statement is that it is inane, especially considering that the entire book presented by Hawking and Mlodinow seems to me to be deeply philosophical itself. Many of the corollaries between seemingly competing theories of the recent decades are now finely blended into a somewhat homogenous line of thought called “M Theory” with the aid of a theory dubbed, “Model Dependent Realism”. This theory is introduced in chapter 3 and brought full circle in the final two chapters. It seems to me that at the root of the “Model Dependent Realism” theory is a glowing ember of philosophical thought and a patent acceptance of epistemological understanding.
Additionally I found some of the analogies and asides to be somewhat juvenile and absurd. In example there is an analogy given ostensibly to elaborate the reality of Feynman’s “sum over histories” and explain away it’s apparent contradictions, the authors refer to a “Roquefort Cheese Moon” and then site the fact that the idea is rendered irrelevant in the current state of the universe but that the cheesy lunar reality could very well influence reality of other universes as a science fact. I am not deaf to the message that the authors are expounding by analogy here, but I am certain the point could have been made in a less sophomoric method.
In the end the book was good read and provided a consummate novice with much to think about and many beautiful insights.
I recommend reading it, if not just to know the author’s minds…
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