Life through the eyes of Hawking

STEPHEN HAWKING’S 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, surprised everybody by becoming a bestseller.

As commitment to religion wanes, people seek alternative answers to fundamental questions. Great thinkers, however, seldom understand the difficulties ordinary mortals have in grasping their lofty ideas and they never use a four-letter word when a 24-letter one will do. Stephen Hawking, although better than most of his peers in this regard, still had a long way to go in 1988 – despite its great success, the Brief History was a difficult read.

His new book, The Grand Design, New Answers to the Ultimate Questions of Life, is much more accessible. Co-authored by Leonard Mlodinow who, one suspects, is responsible for the relative digestibility, its 200 pages are laced with colourful explanations of difficult ideas. This short introduction to relativity theory, quantum mechanics and the current state-of-play in cosmology must be one of the best available. The claim that the laws of physics are sufficient to give rise to the universe without the intervention of God, should ensure a wide readership. It’s not, of course, a new idea: Laplace, when asked about God by Napoleon, famously replied; ‘I have no need of that hypothesis’.