The release date for the English version of 'The Grand Design' by
Stephen Hawking is Sep 2010. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
ONE OF THE GREATEST THIRDERS IN THE WORLD'S FIRST MAJOR WORK IN NEARLY A DECADE—A MARVELOUSLY CONCISE BOOK WITH NEW ANSWERS TO THE ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF LIFE
How and when did the cosmos start? What brings us here? Why is there anything at all as opposed to nothing? What makes reality what it is? Why are the natural laws so precisely balanced to permit the presence of sentient creatures such as ourselves? And, finally, is the apparent “grand design” of our universe evidence of a benevolent creator who set things in motion—or does science offer another explanation?
Once the domain of philosophy, the most basic problems about the beginnings of the world and life itself now fall into the same category and bring scientists, philosophers, and theologians together, if only to argue. In their latest book, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, in nontechnical language characterized by both brilliance and simplicity, offer the latest scientific thinking regarding the secrets of the cosmos.
In The Grand Design, they clarify that quantum theory holds that the universe has several simultaneous existences and histories rather than a single, singular existence. This concept challenges the basic premise of cause and effect when it is extended to the whole cosmos. Nevertheless, the "top-down" method of cosmology that Hawking and
Mlodinow describe would say that the fact that the past takes no definite form means that we create history by observing it, rather than that history creates us. The authors go on to explain that quantum fluctuations in the early cosmos produced us, the readers, and they demonstrate how quantum theory predicts the existence of several universes, each with its own unique set of rules of nature, a concept known as the "multiverse."
Along the way, Hawking and Mlodinow challenge the accepted notion of reality, suggesting that the best explanation we have is a "model-dependent" account of reality. Finally, they provide an engrossing critique of M-theory, which is now the only workable option for a comprehensive "theory of everything." It is an explanation of the rules regulating our world and ourselves. They believe that if verified, it would represent the pinnacle of human reason and the cohesive theory that Einstein sought.
The Grand Design is a book that will inform—and provoke—like no other. It is a condensed, shocking, and richly illustrated introduction to discoveries that are changing our thinking and upsetting some of our most treasured belief systems.