Close-up of the cover of 'Brief Answers to the Big Questions' Photo: John Murray.
Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking
Review by Reg Naulty
Stephen Hawking was working on this book until the time of his death. It contains a valuable introduction by a friend and scientific collaborator, Kip Thorne, and a fond memoir by his daughter, Lucy.
It is impossible not to respect Stephen Hawking, as he achieved so much despite suffering the effects of Motor Neurone Disease. Nevertheless, he would not want criticism withheld on that account. So what he writes about God must be open to debate, and he is quite clear about what he believes: ‘No one created the universe and no one directs our fate… there is probably no heaven and afterlife either.’ His reasoning for asserting that is that ‘Everything can be explained by the laws of nature.’ But that is not science. That is ideology. And for all anyone knows, science may one day explain how someone made the universe.
Hawking writes that ‘protons really can appear at random, stick around for a while and then vanish again, to reappear somewhere else’. He continues ‘The laws of nature itself tell us that not only could the universe have popped into existence, like a proton, and have required nothing in terms of energy, but also that it is possible that nothing caused the Big Bang. Nothing.’
A non-specialist cannot argue with Hawking about what is permitted by the laws of nature, but some claims about them strain belief: ‘A living being like you and me usually has two elements: a set of instructions that tell the system how to keep going and how to reproduce itself, and a mechanism to carry out the instructions.’ Given that biological evolution is basically, as Hawking says, a ‘random walk’, it is hard to see how it could come up with a set of instructions.
Then there is the universe originating in ‘a single point of infinite density’. How can something without volume have any density, let alone infinite density? Objects such as this, as with black holes, are known in physics as ‘singularities’ – that is, regions in which the laws of physics do not hold. Who knows what mysteries may unfold there?
Despite his strictures, Hawking believes that people will always cling to religion because it gives comfort, and because they do not trust or understand science. With respect to the latter point, Hawking has forgotten a predecessor of his at Cambridge, Arthur Stanley Eddington, a Quaker who did understand science and was a theist.
There are other things of interest in the book. Hawking remarks that, now we have mapped our DNA, we are in a position to make corrections. Then we can make improvements. Hawking believes that those venturing into space will be more capable than us, because their genes will have been improved. He also thinks that self designing, self replicating computers are coming. He wisely remarks that we should build our values into them.
