The Grand Design

During last Christmas Kishan and Anusha gave me this book, The Grand Design, by the famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, I think, because the title sort of leans towards the nonsensical theological notion of Intelligent Design. Ha ha ha ... they (Kishan, specially) should not judge a book by the cover or the title. The conclusion of the book is anything but that of the popular American theological ... um ... "ideology."

This is a very well written--yet short--book about modern physics, and the implications thereof. In only about 160 or so pages, Hawking and the co-author Mlodinow talk about where and how the scientific reasoning began and how it evolved. And then, they bring it forward to the modern day theories of Special and General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Yet, in the first page itself, the authors throw down the gauntlet by proclaiming that the "philosophy is dead" and it is up to the scientists to take up the quest for knowledge. Boy, do they ever!

The authors explain quite nicely that in the "model-dependent realism, it is pointless to ask whether a model is real" but it only makes sense to find out if the model "agrees with observation." This concept is quite well and simply explained using the example of what a goldfish sees from a spherical fish-bowl.

For a book which someone can thoroughly read and understand in a few days' time, it isn't reasonable for me to try to summarize the content here. Besides, I will come up well short of the mark, even if I try. In the first chapter, the authors define the task at hand and then go about explaining quite a lot of scientific subject matter in plain language in the subsequent chapters. Within a few chapters, they cover the Newtonian mechanics, the special and general relativity, quantum mechanics, the Maxwell equations, etc. The chapters are quite well organized and the thinking process flow from one to the other. They then show the need for various theories in microscopic and macroscopic levels. After glancing through the standard model, the string theory, the set of M-Theory equations etc. they come to the conclusion that "just as Darwin and Wallace explained how the apparently miraculous design of living forms could appear without intervension by a supreme being, the multiverse concept can explain the fine-tuning of physical law without the need for a benevolent creator who made the universe for our benefit."

The book should be easy to follow even for someone who doesn't have a quantum theory background. This isn't a theoretical physics book. It does not drown the reader with equations and buzzwords. Unlike Richard Dawkins' books, I did not get the sense that Hawking and Mlodinow were itching for a fight with the religious fundamentalists. They just bluntly present what comes out of the science and yet they do not to sugar-coat it.

Even if the future discoveries in various scientific fields change or invalidates the set of M-theories, the central concept brought forth in this book will hold true. It is that we can understand and explain our environment with simple and elegant scientific thought without having to resort to magic, mystery or mythology.

I very highly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to understand the principles of scientific discoveries.