A Brief History Of Time

Light from the sun takes eight minutes to reach the Earth. If a star is sufficiently far away, it could have died, been extinguished, thousands of years before its light reaches us; we are likely staring up at dead stars every night without knowing it. Reading the 1988 edition of A Brief History of Time is a bit like making a wish on a dead star -- its power, once awesome, has waned and faded. As I understand it, Hawking has updated this book a couple of times since its first publication, abandoning some theories and adding others, but since I slogged through Voyage of the Beagle when I was in grade six, I am not by temperament opposed to reading outdated science, knowing that it is a snapshot of the time and not settled fact.

I had a mild interest in physics in high school, especially in what I could understand of quantum mechanics, so my mother sent me this book when it first came out. I don't remember finding it overly difficult to read at the time but I did abandon it out of boredom. As it related to some other books I've been reading lately, I rescued A Brief History of Time from my book shelf, and found it pretty dull again. When discussing quantum mechanics once with my little brother, Kyler, he asked me, "Don't you get confused when they start talking about six or twelve or twenty-four dimensions? Don't you stop and give up when you can't get your brain around it?" He's an engineer and I'm sure his brain does stop and try to visualise the unfathomable, but I answered, "No. I just stipulate those facts-- I will assume a greater brain has justified those concepts and I take them as givens and move on." So while I might say I understand what Hawking was trying to say in this book, I likely don't understand. There are, however, some things besides the science that I found interesting this time.

One was the use of exclamation points after every lame joke. I was reading about the history of this book on wikipedia and it says that Hawking had quite a few disagreements with his publishers, who kept asking him to dumb the text down further and further. I would love to know whether these exclamation points were an editorial choice of the publishing house or if Hawking, dictating through his computer program, would monotone:

It is a matter of common experience that disorder will tend to increase if things are left to themselves period open parenthesis one has only to stop making repairs around the house to see that exclamation point end parenthesis

I also didn't realise the first time around just how obsessed Hawking is with God's role in creating the universe -- or proving that He was unnecessary:

The idea that space and time may form a closed surface without boundary also has profound implications for the role of God in the affairs of the universe. With the success of scientific theories in describing events, most people have come to believe that God allows the universe to evolve according to a set of laws and does not intervene in the universe to break these laws. However, the laws do not tell us what the universe should have looked like when it started -- it would still be up to God to wind up the clockwork and choose how to start it off. So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

It reads as though this entire book, Hawking's entire career, is a proof against the existence of God, but he hedges his bets when he ends with:

If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God. 

Life of Pi sums up a philosophy nearer to my own beliefs: There was some kind of accident, a boat collision, a Big Bang, but the details of it will likely never be known:

"So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with animals or the story without animals?"

Mr. Okamoto: "That's an interesting question.''

Mr. Chiba: "The story with animals." 

Mr. Okamoto: "Yes. The story with animals is the better story." 

Pi Patel: "Thank you. And so it goes with God."

Maybe the universe required a clockmaker to set it in motion, maybe it's a self-contained system with no beginning and no boundaries, but if it's fundamentally unknowable, who would prefer the less interesting option?

It's hard to read A Brief History of Time today without having some of the more lurid details of Stephen Hawking's life intrude on the mind: Was there a blowup that led to him leaving his chair at Cambridge? Did his second wife abuse him, beyond once leaving him helplessly exposed in the sun? Is he going to continue the pro-Palestine politics, boycotting speaking in Israel, even though it is the only middle eastern country with an open scientific community (not to mention significant support for people with disabilities)? It was interesting reading the biographies of Einstein and Galileo and especially Newton at the end of this book-- after reading Hawking take a few personal swipes at fellow physicists he's worked with over the years, it's funny to see that he appears to just be following in Newton's footsteps. 

The most interesting fact I learned about him from wikipedia:

Hawking began his schooling at the Byron House School; he later blamed its "progressive methods" for his failure to learn to read while at the school

Imagine Hawking having had trouble learning to read; and yet he eventually taught himself to work on large equations geometrically in his mind once he was no longer capable of writing things out. It's reminiscent of Einstein failing math in school (or is that apocryphal?). In the end, if Stephen Hawking never existed, I think it would have been necessary to invent him: his story is so fundamentally inspiring, even if he downplays the role that motor neuron disease has played in his life; the race against time when he was first diagnosed and given two years to live; the eerie and futuristic monotone voice that his computer speaks in; the wheelchair-bound genius who leaves his long-suffering wife for his nurse, only to have her treat him abhorrently; all the while being one of the greatest minds in the history of physics…or is he? Many of the ideas he presents as fact in A Brief History of Time -- like imaginary time and the quantum singularity at the beginning of the universe -- were removed from later editions, apparently when disproved by other theorists. Hawking is this huge personality in a shrinking container, rumoured to soon lose his ability to manipulate his computer at all, and I don't have the perspective or knowledge to determine if he has made as significant a contribution as popular opinion states. When it comes to this book, however, if I am the intended target audience, I will deem myself worthy to judge and say that it didn't quite work for me. Perhaps a later edition…? A different work by Hawking…? Maybe time will tell...?