Over at The Wall Street Journal, physicist Sean Carroll reviews The Grand Design, the new book by Stephen Hawking (Leonard Mlodinow is a coauthor). Carroll gives a good summary of what the book is about and how Hawking’s speculations fit into the received wisdom of cosmology, but—curiously—fails to pass judgment on whether the book is worth reading. He doesn’t damn it, but the approbation is limited to the phrase “short and sprightly.” In light of other negative reviews, it would have been nice to get Carroll’s overall assessment.
Sean Carroll reviews Hawking
September 11, 2010 • 1:24 pm
why not send him a msg on twitter? ‘s what i would do.
140 characters would force him to give a short response 🙂
They cut out the last paragraph of the review, which was to have been:
“This is a quibble, and the more important observation is that The Grand Design is an ambitious book that packs a considerable wallop. If it doesn’t provide the final answers to Life, the Universe, and Everything, it has the courage to keep asking the questions.”
Everyone is coming out of the closet as effectively a modal realist nowadays.
Still got to read the book yet, however I did watch your video clip.
Keith Olbermann interviews Leonard Mlodinow a couple of days ago. Worth waiting through the countdown music and Mr Olbermann notes the late Pontiff’s advise to Hawking.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#39089253
Thanks for the rest of the review!
There was book excerpt in 9/3 WSJ
http://tinyurl.com/grand-design1492
and today’s WSJ also has follwup letters to the editor (mostly disagreeing with Hawking’s view that God is needed less and less as science advances)
Carroll, the author of a terrific book, is being very nice about a not-so-good book. First, the idea of the string theory landscape as an alternative to god as an explanation for fine tuning in the universe is not original to Hawking and Mlodinow. Lenny Susskind and his colleagues at Stanford proposed it earlier.
Second, it is not a necessary idea to begin with. Perhaps fine tuning, like existence, simply doesn’t need an explanation. It just is. Or maybe there is another explanation.
Frankly, as an atheist I am not going to base my skepticism about god on a theory that has no more evidence supporting it than does the god hypothesis itself.
I absolutely agree with your second point. That’s exactly the problem I have with a lot of these overarching cosmologolical/physical theories.
If there’s no way of knowing, experimentally testing, or finding evidence that tends to lead one way or the other with regard to their truth/usefulness, they’re really just pie in the sky fairy.
“First, the idea of the string theory landscape as an alternative to god as an explanation for fine tuning in the universe is not original to Hawking and Mlodinow.”
I don’t think anyone claimed it was original to them. They’re just giving the idea Hawking’s imprimatur, in a mass-market work. He’s saying “this is what some people are thinking and it looks right to me.”
On Sean Carroll’s review The Wall Street Journal did carry my reply:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704358904575477583868227458.html#articleTabs%3Dcomments