The book for sure must still be making waves and will continue to do so for years in my cherished fields of astronomy & physics [astrophysics], religion and philosophy. In this book Stephen Hawking retracts his earlier stand on the beginning of the universe from an Intelligent Designer / Creator-based universe to a random/chance-based universe. Such an extraordinary claim by an extraordinary scientist made me wonder what that would do to the thinking and understanding of the universe of ordinary mortals like me!
The book beautifully explains the latest theory, M-theory (a network of theories which can be applied at different locales depending on the frame of reference in which one finds himself) which might prove to be a viable candidate to explain the origins of the universe and the age-old questions which man has always wanted to know.
In the first chapter, I enjoyed the pages which traced the history of science and man's scientific exploration from the Ionian Greeks up until the present time. As a (former) student of science/physics i felt that i should at least remember the information presented there.
Richard Feynman's "sum over histories" theory is explained in much detail in one of the chapters to help explain the origin of the universe and the possibility of multiverse. An oversimplified version and obviously an incomplete description of the sum over histories theory would be: the path that a sub-atomic particle like the electron takes to move from point A to point B is not fixed, instead it can take the any number of infinite paths that is available to it and it does take these infinite paths simultaneously. The same concept when applied to the universe-system would mean that ours is not the only universe that is out there instead there are billions of universes possible.
The author's implicit claim that science alone (random quantum fluctuations) can explain the origin of the universe seemed a bit too self-proclaimed to the theistic-mind of mine. Science definitely has come a long way to help explain our own origins and the universe's origins and their purposes but whether it will ever be a complete explanation remains doubtful.
A beautiful book which explains beautifully and simply how our universe works and our latest scientific understanding of the universe and the role which we tiny dots play here. Even as i put down the book, vowing to read it a second time to understand the marvelous workings of our cosmos, the lines from one another book (No One Sees God by Michael Novak) which i was reading simultaneously came rushing:
"Who are we under these stars, with the wind on our faces? What should we do? Who should we hope for?"
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