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A Brief History of Time

Stephen Hawking

Start date: October 1, 2020

Finish date: December 31, 2020

Discussion: Stephen Hawking

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Stephen Hawking

A brief history of time
By Lindsey · 2 posts · 3 views

last updated Jan 04, 2020 02:39PM

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Sep 09, 2008 Bill rated it really liked it

Shelves: physics, cosmology

This book puts me in mind of the story about how a Harvard number theorist, through some malfunction of the scheduling computer, got assigned to teach an introductory course in pre-calculus. Being one of those individuals to whom math came so easily that they couldn't grasp how difficult others found it, the professor had no idea what to cover in such a course.

So, he went to the chair of the department, who told him: "You'll want to start with the real number-line and then progress to inequalit ...more

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Dec 20, 2014 Fares rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, books-based-on-authors-research, history, cosmos

These are my random comments in review of this book:

- Probably should more accurately be titled "the technical history of the universe"

- Very thought provoking, intriguing, and informative

- Could have been written with a little more compassion. Not very well laid out.

- I like how he gives credit to people that have contributed to his own work and how he built upon their ideas and discoveries.

- I couldn't help but notice how sometimes he, and other physicists, want to believe something regardles These are my random comments in review of this book:

- Probably should more accurately be titled "the technical history of the universe"

- Very thought provoking, intriguing, and informative

- Could have been written with a little more compassion. Not very well laid out.

- I like how he gives credit to people that have contributed to his own work and how he built upon their ideas and discoveries.

- I couldn't help but notice how sometimes he, and other physicists, want to believe something regardless of whether or not it's the truth. This is a major flaw in theoretical physics that biases the way these scientists work on their theories and experiments. For example, there were several occasions where he said "when I did the calculations, I found to my surprise and annoyance, that even non rotating black holes should apparently create and enjoy particles at a steady rate. At first I thought that this emission indicated that one of the approximations I had used was not valid. I was afraid that if Bekenstein found our about it, he would use it as further argument to support his ideas about the entropy of black holes, which I still did not like".

- Life sciences and the current human body of knowledge encompass countless areas from nanotechnology to microeconomics. Although we have thousands of sciences and fields of study of things available on earth, we have only one that describes things outside of earth; astrology. This is weird, to say the least.
When we think how small earth is and how big the universe is, we would reach two conclusions:
One is that we are very, extremely, enormously, and so profoundly ignorant of what is really out there. We are so ignorant we have one name for it "space", and we think it's made of nothing. Dark matter, which is shown by theoretical mathematical calculations to stabilize the gravitational forces in this universe, is the biggest and most longstanding unknown 'thing' since the beginning of human civilizations.
Two is that this universe is so full of secrets and dilemmas that await unravelling. It's such an extremely delicate and complicated system that works so cohesively well. How could all of that happen by chance?

- Although he meant it conservatively, he wrote "I still believe there are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end of the search for the ultimate laws of nature". I'm not sure why old people tend to have this impression, whether they were laymen or top theoretical physicists. Is it because they think they know a lot and have the delusion that what they learned is all there is to learn, or just because they're old? Or both?
I think he was very wrong about this. Laws of nature in many many fields are still being discovered and harvested. From epigenetics to biofuels to human settlements in space, the road ahead is still a long way to go. This did happen several times thoughout the book, where he was a little reductionist in underestimating the role of other sciences, especially medicine and biology in which he made a few wrong assumptions. ...more

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