Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The only good thing I can say about this book is that it is beatifully illustrated. It is very rare that I give a popular physics book such a poor rating. In fact, this is the first time I think I have ever told people not to read one! As a professional physicist, I think it is very important to understand the basis for all claims in science, proceed with metaphysical statements only when the scientist is fully cognizant of the limitations of such statements, and to keep in perspective the importance of philosophy in the sciences, as well as its role. It is then no wonder why I hated one of the first statements made in the book, namely, that philosophy is dead and has no role in science. Of course it does! Every act of interpreting data is a philosophical act. The formal act of developing a theory is itself an act of philosophy. The only thing I found more mind-boggling than this statement was that Hawking went on to spend the rest of the book talking about realism and anti-realism, which is a central debate in the philosophy of science. Hawking says nothing new about this debate, and I am not entirely sure what final point he was driving at because, as far as I can tell, the conclusion that would most support his position was undermined by numerous statements he made earlier on. His closing statements about working toward a final theory were undermined by the fact that he says that phenomena may have multiple theories attached to it and that no single theory is more correct than the other; it is simply a matter of which is more useful. This is strictly an anti-realist statement, yet it seems that Hawking believes a final theory is, somehow (although he doesn't state "how" this somehow could be, still possible. I think that this book can only be the result of one of two things: 1) Apathy toward the topic, in which case I don't know why he wrote or 2) This book repesents the waning and utterly diminished mind of a once brilliant theorist. I would hope it is the former. My biggest complaint about the book is that Hawking refuses to accept that the world is governed by cause and effect. He cites Feynman's idea of sum over histories, but this is taking a theoretical tool and proposing that this is the way the universe is, in-itself. There has been a huge push in the 20th century toward randomness in physics. I think the reason for this is that physicists are despairing over Hume's problem of "What constitutes a necessary causal connection?" Moreover, physicists are also despairing over a question formally posed in the 19th century "What constitutes a necessary statistical inference?" The lack of progress on these two questions have, in my opinion, induced despair and, consequently, indolence. Rather than try to proceed on the natural assumption of physical science, that all physical phenomena are induced by prior physical phenomena, they are simply saying that there is no cause and effect, only randomness that is loosely governed by laws of physics. This a position that Hawking holds to in his book, which is an ironically philosophical one for someone who thinks that philosophy is dead. If you decide to read this book, be sure to ask at every turn "Is this statement a testable one?" This will provide you with a test to decide whether a statement is a scientific one or a philosophical one.