A Brief E-mail About a Brief Review of A Brief History

Hi David,

I’d like to request a copy of your wonderful book review for inclusion in our class portfolio. Congratulations on a fine achievement! I’m sure the class will very much enjoy reading it, as I did.

Many thanks!

Monika Rydygier Smith
Writing Instructor
Department of English
University of Victoria


Book Review: Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time"

Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" is well titled and well worth the read. Hawking begins by tracing our most fundamental understandings of the heavens from ancient Greece to modern day. However, the true appeal of the text goes beyond mere historical exposition, and lies in Hawking's reiterating the questions that have dominated philosophy, religion, and even the curiosity of the common man, since the dawn of intelligence. In the 20th and 21st centuries, people have become suspicious of, and disillusioned with archaic pre-enlightenment religious explanations in the face of mounting, logical and irrefutable scientific evidence. Unfortunately, the other end of the spectrum, modern science, has progressed into the world of the academic elite so far that the common man, still curious, has been alienated by mathematical explanations and the jargon of physics in such a way that the only people qualified to explain what we now understand, lack the simple common vocabulary to address the public outside of the elite. Stephen Hawking has finally produced a literary bridge between these two factions that speaks in accessible language to explain some of the loftiest scientific explorations, primarily between the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, and on his own work primarily regarding black holes. All of this is packaged in a conversational style that revisits personal anecdotes and has a tenor of humility against a cosmos that is unforgiving in its expanse and complexity and still allows for the possibility of 'god'.
The very first chapter of the book outlines the largest names of historical relevance in the exploration of the Universe: beginning in Ancient Greece with Aristotle, he moves through Ptolemy, Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Kant, Einstein, and Hubble. Most people have heard of these great names but, without formal education, may have been intimidated to even pretend they understood the most fundamental aspects of their relevance. Hawking connects them all in a historical timeline as his point of departure to advance into more modern theories. He even manages to set the tenor for explaining contradictions in modern theories by forgivingly pointing out what was valuable about theories that are now considered incorrect, rather than merely touting them as wrong. For example, he notes how Copernicus was the first to posit the idea that "the planets moved in circular orbits around the sun", and that nearly 100 years later "the German, Johannes Kepler, and the Italian, Galileo Galilei-started publicly to support the Copernican theory, despite the fact that the orbits it predicted did not quite match the ones observed" (Hawking 4). Hawking continues to point out that Kepler "modified Copernicus's theory, suggesting that the planets moved not in circles, but in ellipses [. . .] The predictions now finally matched the observations" (Hawking 4). The example shows how science has built upon the theories of the past, rather than dogmatically abandoning them at the first sign of error, and Hawking reports these connections in a delightfully simplistic and accessible prose style.
As valuable as his connections and simplification are, the quality of the text doesn't end there. Hawking weaves into this fascinating history an unexpected levity. At the very outset of the first chapter, Hawking captures his audience with a comic anecdote about an elderly woman challenging a scientist in saying, "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise [. . .] You're very clever young man, very clever, [. . .] But it's turtles all the way down" (Hawking 1). Herein lies the charm of the text. Each topic is put into a conversational style that is highly inclusive, and often humorous.
From this humorous anecdote, Hawking launches into the primary appeal of the text by listing those fundamental questions of cosmic curiosity that are universal amongst all that have ever gazed at the heavens and wondered. "[W]hy do we think we know better? What do we know about the universe, and how do we know it? Where did the universe come from, and where is it going? Did the universe have a beginning, and if so, what happened before then? What is the nature of time? Will it ever come to an end? Can we go back in time?" (Hawking 1). These questions invoke many popular-culture science fiction texts and movies with the philosophical curiosities that spawned them. These monumental images and questions are then firmly grounded in explanations of the most current scientific debates and discoveries. Often these require more than one read because, even in their simplest form, they can become complex. However, Hawking never fails to bring the language back to the reader with a mundane example. "It will be like the ripples that spread out on the surface of a pond when a stone gets thrown in. The ripples spread out as a circle that gets bigger [. . .] This cone is called the future light cone" (Hawking 26). He uses simple images such as playing cards to demonstrate complex atomic structures (Hawking 69), and he interjects personal anecdotes on his 'bets' in competition with contemporaries to prove or disprove theories.
In the heart of the text, Hawking deeply examines modern ramifications of the general theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, black holes, and wormholes. Although this subject matter is heady, Hawking gently builds one topic on to another in a very efficiently chronological manner. He carefully avoids any presupposition of knowledge or terminology that he has not yet introduced. His chapters move seamlessly from one topic to the next while the reader is both fascinated and entertained and unaware of the increasing complexity of the subject, and their own surprising ability to understand what was formerly exclusive to the highest elite of physics. Interspersed with diagrams, his text reads like the lecture of a talented raconteur who is a master at both explaining the complex and using the chalkboard to do so.
Hawking approaches his audience with humility and respect, while questioning dogmatic perspectives. In one memorable anecdote, he states that "I attended a conference on cosmology organized by the Jesuits in the Vatican [. . .] At the end of the conference the participants were granted an audience with the Pope. He told us that it was all right to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God. I was glad then that he did not know the subject of the talk I had just given at the conference - the possibility that space-time was finite but had no boundary, which means that it had no beginning, no moment of Creation" (Hawking 120). Inherently, Hawking is clear that his talk represented only a "possibility" and he infuses scientific jargon into his anecdote so contextually, that the reader is not alienated.
Leaving the theological doors open and his humility intact, Hawking finishes where he began: he lays down the very questions that make the text interesting - philosophical, not scientific - which remain admittedly unanswered. "What is the nature of the universe? What is our place in it and where did it and we come from? Why is it the way it is?" (Hawking 187). The fascination of the topic remains intact with the satisfaction of a greater understanding and a hope that it will continue to increase and be more fascinating yet. The fundamental human quest for knowledge is not resolved; the thirst remains unquenched. Hawking has merely simplified all that history and science has revealed so far and shown how the grand-scale general theory of relativity (primarily ascribed to Einstein) and the miniscule theory of quantum mechanics give rise to contradiction and the current search for reconciliation. This search in itself has revealed many new questions and fascinatingly unexpected scientific truths, or theoretical probabilities. As a reader you will be left with a thirst to know more, but the pride and satisfaction that your point of departure for examining the great questions of the universe is now much more well informed.


Works Cited
Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time - The Updated and Expanded Tenth Anniversary Edition. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1998.