The Grand Design

[Nabobalis]

So the books been out for a week or so now.

Who has it and is reading it? I have my copy here but it is packed ready for university.

Any opinions on the book? I rather it be from people who has read the book/reading the book not quotes you read from a site.

 

[Chesterton]

I haven't read the book but I will review the title (with the help of Merriam Webster):

design: a. a particular purpose held in view by an individual or group b. deliberate purposive planning c. a mental project or scheme in which means to an end are laid down d. a deliberate undercover project or scheme...(you get the idea)

If the world's smartest dude meant something else, the world's smartest dude should've said something else.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

I haven't read the book but I will review the title (with the help of Merriam Webster):

design: a. a particular purpose held in view by an individual or group b. deliberate purposive planning c. a mental project or scheme in which means to an end are laid down d. a deliberate undercover project or scheme...(you get the idea)

If the world's smartest dude meant something else, the world's smartest dude should've said something else.

Shame on you Chesterton! You should know better than to interpret a piece of text literally. And, for that matter, judging a book by its cover! Boo hiss boo.

 

[Cabal]

It's not bad, but like any other Stephen Hawking book, it's got positivism up the jacksie - and this despite one really daft paragraph at the beginning where he declares that philosophy is dead (no-one mention Hume, Popper or Kuhn, for goodness sake...)

The controversial snippet that did the rounds in all the papers is right at the end, and it's barely a couple of pages, and while the ideas of the grand design do fit together pretty nicely, the physicist in me is screaming out for some equations or graphs, or at least something other than taking Hawking's word for it - in summary, it feels very like The Universe in a Nutshell, but with Feynman path integrals. Admittedly probably the best explanation of Feynman path integrals I've ever come across, and that ties in with the grand design particularly nicely.

 

[Blayz]

I agree with Cabal. I can understand leaving out the physics only another physicist would understand, but some workings would have been nice. It felt rushed and light, and rambling in places.

Quantum buckyballs were the most interesting bit.

 

[[serious]]

Really want this book. I need to check the library for it.

 

[Gracchus]

I found it an interesting read, but I am not sure about some of it. There certainly wasn't enough information/math/exposition to make a case for m-theory. It is the border of unexplored territory.