Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Modern Physics for the Layman and Everyone, October 11, 2005
This is a wonderful book. It really explains many concepts of modern physics in layman's terms. Often we hear scientific words bantered about on various educational television programming without really understanding the concepts and theories behind them. This book goes into concise detail on quite a few topics and does a rather good job explaining them. I thought the explanation of Einstein's general theory of relativity was well done. The explanation of time differential when matter nears the speed of light was explained quite clearly. It truly is relative from your vantage point. Also the concept of space being curved was well presented. This is really a very interesting book. I truly couldn't put it down when I found it in the library. It really stimulates your thought processes and gives you new perspectives on the world we live in. I really like this book.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Take a little time to understand time..., May 30, 2006
This book was written in 1987, and since then others have made developments in physics available to the layman. (See Brian Greene's Elegant Universe, and I believe Hawking has an updated version of Brief History out now.) But this book became available from a friend and I jumped at the opportunity to read it.
Hawking's writing style is very reader-friendly, and generally in layman's terms. There are no equations in this book, although he constantly refers to crunching numbers with relativistic and quantum mechanical equations. The reason why this book remains a good read is because it explains how our understanding of our universe developed from the time of Aristotle through Copernicus, Galileo, Einstein and the scientists of the 20th century. Hawking does a great job explaining how our notions changed as relativity and quantum mechanics were shown to be valid models of physical behavior.
It seems that Hawking's passion is for black holes, but his discussion of them seems very abstract to me. I was more captivated by one of the final chapters called the Arrow of Time. He poses the question of why the thermodynamic, psychological, and cosmological arrows of time run in the same direction. In other words, why does it take energy to create order, why don't we remember the future, and why is the universe expanding? Would it be plausible the other way around? There are lots of intriguing ideas in this brief survey - highly recommended.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A black hole of meaninglessness!, March 21, 2009
A really short story indeed! The sophisticated newspaper "Die Zeit" exaggerated strongly when it wrote: The physician Hawking is about to find the formula that explains the universe!"
Perhaps this was meant ironical, as if the universe could be explained with some formulas! Formulas can at best help to better understand the whole thing which can only be measured in parts. And understanding the universe does not entail to know what is beyond, before or after. Meanwhile some more years have passed and Hawking has not yet outwitted Einstein!
Elsewhere it is also hard to agree that Hawking achieved something really convincing. He incures pre-arranged opinions rather undeliberated. As an example I exemplify the apes who type on a type writer so-and- so many million years and finally bring out a Sonnet of Shakespeare. That may be. But the error in reasoning is this: that there must be also somebody who knows that this is Shakespeare, let us read and like it! And then again million apes have to type for another billion years till the next work of Shakespeare. Only that nobody can remember the first work! This is how Hawking explains the evolution theory! This is all about facts! A poor performance of human reason! But impressing for the awestruck reader who holds no academic grade in physics!
On the other side Hawking praises the "uncertainty relation" of Heisenberg. That one exactly puts an "Outside" of this cosmos beside the "Inside" of the representatives with a view more dictated to see the "inside-is-everything"- view. Hawking claims: "The uncertainty relation has far reaching effects for our view of the world. Even today, fifty years after its formulation, many philosophers have not yet grasped the whole meaning..." yes, and Hawking joins them! Here also, it seems, Hawkings conclusions have a certain uncertainty relation, which I would like to christen the "uncertainty relation" of Hawking! The laugh is always on the loser!
Uncertain is Hawking also in his conclusions on the entropy, that is: the fact that the parts of the whole have the increasing tendency to create nothing more than disorder and only a purposeful input of energy can turn that process. This proves that the universe should have to be chaotic if only moved by material and energy in space and time. Not so for Hawking!
Intelligent creatures, Hawking is asserting, can only be in the expansion-phase of the universe! I bet that Hawking likes Harry Potter! Are we proper in the expansion-phase at the moment?
Great also how Hawking reports how he escaped the clutches of the pope, because he did not like to share the fate of Galilei! Hawking had thought about abolishing God with the invention of an idea which contradicted the wish of the pope (who had called on a conference about cosmos questions) nobody may assert any binding statements could be made on the question what was before the Big Bang. Hawking`s idea was that time-space is limited, but without borders! So no need for a God! Did you know this?
Thanks to Hawking we know now! What will God say to this? This is indeed comparable to the Galilei discussion. Because Galilei had asserted something in the public what the Vatican had not denied out of ignorance, but because the Vatican wanted that the man on the street, who the church had kept uneducated, would not get an inner conflict, when he was confronted with the truth, that the Earth is not flat but round. For the church it was about power, not about truth (nothing has changed therein). That the Earth is round was known since long even in the clergy (the idea of a slice stems from the paganism). I a m tired of reading historically wrong Gallilei-the- Earth- is- round- stories.
It is true, much of what he is writing und what others before him wrote, is correct. How he explains the relativity theory of Einstein. But you could read that somewhere else as well, that the universe expands; that it seems to have had a beginning; that, when a cherry falls from a tree, it does nothing else as might be expected by Newton or Einstein; that a body with double weight is drawn to earth by double force; that black holes are not quite as black as we might think, etc.. We also hear what happens when a black hole is becoming very small, although it "is not really clear, very probable it would disappear for ever in a radiation-eruption, the equivalent of millions of H-bomb explosions!" Ah, right, so it is very probable!
The genesis of life is described by Hawking like this: "possibly" atoms and molecules got together! Geez! Do not bite off more what you can chew!
For somebody, who is not so much busy with the topic, let him say, right, let us take in some of these, it might be not too bad. For others who want serious material I cannot give a recommendation and I can only warn of this superficial, in parts sloppily considered work. For me a mispurchase. I only read it, to know what Hawking has to say. Indeed not much and that is enough honour I can give him! I fear that his book will also disappear one day in a black hole of meaninglessness!
By the way, since long I came to the conclusion: scholarship which is not bridled by humbleness, is very close to foolishness.
According to his final words Hawkings seems to believe in the possible final triumph of the human reason over the world-mysteries. The last sentence: "- then we would know Gods plan!" seems to be too optimistic, because the human mind is too much in this world bound. It makes more sense to hope for an abbreviation of the procedure: God could explain his plan Himself!
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