Physicist Stephen Hawking is certainly not the first scientist to dismiss thousands of years of religious belief, but he’s the latest. And he’s got a new book.
Hawking and Caltech physicist Leonard Mlodinow, in “The Grand Design,” tackle questions both scientific and philosophical, exploring man’s understanding of how life came to be.
The authors argue that physics, and specifically a derivation of string theory called M-theory, can explain the beginning of the so-called multiverse, making God immaterial to the equation.
“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing,” says Hawking. “Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.
“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”
Accepting the idea that M-theory can give an explanation for why life exists is probably a leap of faith in itself, unless you are as smart as Hawking.
Others remain skeptical, including Craig Callendar, a philosophy professor at the University of California, San Diego:
M-theory in either sense is far from complete. But that doesn’t stop the authors from asserting that it explains the mysteries of existence: why there is something rather than nothing, why this set of laws and not another, and why we exist at all. According to Hawking, enough is known about M-theory to see that God is not needed to answer these questions. Instead, string theory points to the existence of a multiverse, and this multiverse coupled with anthropic reasoning will suffice. Personally, I am doubtful. (New Scientist)
Either way, it’s pretty good buzz for a book launch.
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Firstly let me point out an irritating and very common misperception. Stephen Hawkins is NOT a scientist.
He is a theoretical physicist and in common with others of his kind (Brian Greene and Lee Smolin, for instance) must properly be viewed as a science fiction writer who mostly uses the simple language of mathematics for his works.
You see, science is an evidence-based domain.
And there is not the slightest shred of hard evidence for, say, the eleven spatial dimensions at present favoured by string theorists. Or of the “branes” beloved of Hawkins. I am not knocking these people. The world needs dreamers. Science fiction, whether written in mathematics or natural language, is a playground of the imagination from which important ideas that correspond to the real world sometimes emerge. But until any ideas are backed up by evidence they are certainly not part of science.
But to address the main topic, Hawkins’ latest natural language interpretation, “The Grand Design”. We at last see him starting to break away from the quasi-religious mindset, strangely so common among theoretical physicists. Unfortunately he then launches back into the SF realm of “M” theory. Not only is this completely devoid of evidence, it, like the Everett model of parallel universes, is extraordinarily extravagant.
This contrasts with the evolutionary model of our observed universe which is described in my book “Unusual Perspectives”. Although certainly allowing of the speculation of a multiplicity universes, UP offers much greater parsimony, and, for its primary theme, a solid evidential basis.
My present work “The Goldilocks Effect” is a rather more straightforward treatment of this evolutionary model and will be soon ready for publication. Meanwhile, “Unusual Perspectives” is available in its entirety for free download from the eponymous website.