Posted on 26 Feb 2012 in
In this ambitious book
- Why is there something rather than nothing?
- Why do we exist?
- Why this particular set of laws and not some other?
In the process of trying to answering the ultimate questions, the real master Hawking has covered physics, philosophy, psychology, cognitive and cosmography.
So basically it’s a quite interesting and worth reading book.
in the beginning, Hawking just claimed that ‘Philosophy is dead’, we got philosophy because when we’re young (both means the species human beings and as an individual person ), we’re so curious about everything. but now philosophy cannot answer those questions he mentioned.
For me, a physics learner also loving philosophy,I must say that now philosophy has become a tool, to help me and others improving individual happiness, and tell us how to live, how to die. Philosophy itself always remind us to live peacefully, seek for knowledge and freedom.
He also mentioned a lot interesting questions and point of views in this book, such as :
- Do people have free will? If we have free will, where in the evolutionary tree did it develop? Do blue-green algae or bacteria have free will, or is their behavior automatic and within the realm of scientific law? Is it only multicelled organisms that have free will, or only mammals?
- If nature is governed by laws, three questions arise: What is the origin of the laws? Are there any exceptions to the laws, i.e., miracles? Is there only one set of possible laws?
- But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality? Might not we ourselves also be inside some big goldfish bowl and have our vision distorted by an enormous lens? The goldfish’s picture of reality is different from ours, but can we be sure it is less real? ………
I can notes and copy more, each of these questions can be discussed for half an century and perhaps have no definite answer.
While Hawking use interesting examples and logic reasoning to answer you these questions.
I just understand part of this book, But basically I can read it as a interesting brief history of modern physics.
so at the end of this you know not-that-much-worth-reading-blog,I will use my own words try to answer the ultimate questions.
- Why is there something rather than nothing?
It’s just like zero equals negative plus positive, so the total Energy of the universe equals zero, it’s out of zero, nothing, we don’t need God to create it. or we can use the words that Laozi wrote in
- Why do we exist?
It’s more like the earth choose us, not we choose to live. but anyway you see now we’re all trying to destroy earth.
- Why this particular set of laws and not some other?
The particular set of laws has been build/code in the universe, it’s just like when we’re born, we have human’s character. the happy, unhappy, fear build/code in our brain.
It’s a worth-reading book, even this notes self not so worth-reading.