“Some books are to be tasted; others swallowed; few to be chewed and digested.”
The English philosopher Bacon’s call to deal different books differently is thought-provoking as there are books about love, war, traditions, culture, traveling, history, technology but what about books that leave us bewildered after we have gone through them? Stepen Hawking’s book “Brief Answers to big Questions” is such a fascinating one.
Hamlet puts it so beautifully, “I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself the king of infinite space.” What Hemlet means here is that, though we humans are confined physically, but our minds are free to explore the infinite space and universe and to discover the undiscovered entities.
With the above as an index, our mind also baffles us sometimes, putting up some of the sought-after questions into perspective like: what is God? Is there a God? Is there life after death? Will we survive on Earth forever? These are some of the questions which have astonished thousands of great minds. A handful of the elevated personages have dedicated their entire energies to shape a better and prosperous tomorrow. One of them is the late scientist and the greatest mind of the twenty-first century: Stephen Hawking.
He has answered some of the most confusing questions in his book published by John Murray.
The book grabs the attention of its readers from the beginning, asking its readers the big question: Is there a God?
For many of us, the aforementioned question remains a simple thing since the answer to it has almost been the same from generations to generations that a supernatural entity or God created everything. Catastrophic calamities like floods, earthquakes, storms etc, were caused by a deity. People who questioned these would either were sentenced to death or charged of blasphemy. Didn’t the world seem little bit odd?
Primitive people related all those natural disasters to a pantheon of goddesses or gods who behaved in unpredictable ways. Nonetheless, nobody could predict what would they do and the only path to win them was by alms or deeds. This practice still remains partially to-date where hundreds of thousands of religious people subscribe to this belief and they devote their entire life to the cause of their religion provided they get a good job, they have asked for or an A-grade in the exams. In a nutshell, though science is significantly answering questions that are providing to the religion, people will still cling to the religion, for it provides comfort or either they lack sense of understanding or trusting science.
The book says that according to Stephen Hawking, a few years ago, an headline was run in the front page of The Times Newspaper. The headline read: Hawking: God Didn’t Create Universe. The article was deeply illustrated, containing a drawing by Michelangelo where the God looked thunderous and Hawking smug. Conformably, Stephen Hawking was of the view that his work is not the proving or disproving the existence of the God but to give a rational framework to understand the laws of nature since everything in the Universe can be explained by studying the laws of nature.
The book contained a very deep message that questioning either a simple thing like what is the human body made of or is there a God isn’t a crime rather a reasonable framework to understand ourselves.
The book later then browses to a genius of 300 BCE. A Greek scientific pioneer named Aristarchus was immensely captivated by eclipses profoundly, specifically the esclipes of Luna: our moon. He questioned and studied the heavens far down and traced to a satisfying conclusion that events like eclipses were not caused by a divine entity rather when the earth casts a shadow on the moon, it is a lunar eclipse and when the moon shades the earth happens a solar eclipse. He took the envelope further and deduced that the Earth did not form to be center of the Universe but it orbits the sun. Indeed, the Universe is a machine governed by the laws of the laws of nature__laws that can be understood by humans.
To me, no matter how one answers but the question “What is God?” remains the only question in the world that has been giving a tough time to believers and non-unbelievers alike, since the question has built entire civilizations and also torn them down. It has brought peace and harmony in nations while it has also waged wars and begotten violation.
However, the book also casts glances on black holes, predicting our future and “Is there a God?” and “Is there a life after death?” are some of the questions that are given brief focus.
The book is a treat for one who wants to test his mind about confusing questions. Jhon Murray’s book and the answers of stephen is what actually counts in the book.
“Brief answers to big questions” is the final book of Stephen Hawking which was published by John Murray in October 2018 after Hawking departed. The book has sold, less or more, 221,173 copies around the globe.
The book is ready to catch your foci when you give it a read.