《大设计》：宇宙何时并如何起始？我们为何在此？为何是有非无？何为实在本性？为何自然定律被这么精细地调谐至让我们这样的生命存在？以及最后,我们宇宙的表观“大设计”能否证实使事物运行的仁慈的造物主？科学能否提供另一种解释？有关宇宙起源以及生命本身的最基本的问题,曾经为哲学的范围,现在占据着科学家、哲学家和神学家相遇但却自说自话的领地。在霍金和蒙洛迪诺的新书中,他们以精彩简朴的非专业语言表述有关宇宙奥秘的最新的科学思考。他们在《大设计》中解释,根据量子论,宇宙不仅具有单独的存在或历史,而且同时存在每种可能的历史。把这种思想应用于宇宙整体,就对因果概念本身提出疑问。然而,霍金和蒙洛迪诺描述的“从顶到底”的宇宙学方法会说,过去没有采取确定的形式这一事实意味着,我们因观察历史而创造历史,而非历史创造我们。作者进一步解释,我们自身是宇宙极早期的量子涨落的产物,并且展现量子论如何预言“多宇宙”——该思想是说,我们的宇宙只不过是自发地从无中出现的许多宇宙中的一个,每个宇宙具有不同的自然定律。霍金和蒙洛迪诺在这过程中诘问实在的传统概念,提出“依赖模型”的实在论,这是我们能够希望找到的最佳答案。他们以对M理论的精彩评价来结束全书,M理论解释了制约我们和我们宇宙的定律,它还是完备的“万物理论”的目前可行的仅有候选者。他们写道,如果被证实的话,它将是爱因斯坦寻求的统一理论,也是人类理性的终极胜利。

这是一部简洁的惊人的附有大量插图的指南,导向正在改变我们的宇宙观并危及我们最神圣的信仰系统的一些发现。没有任何一本书像《大设计》这样信息丰富,这样刺激。

THE FIRST MAJOR WORK IN NEARLY A DECADE BY ONE OF THE WORLD’S GREAT THINKERS—A MARVELOUSLY CONCISE BOOK WITH NEW ANSWERS TO THE ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF LIFE When and how did the universe begin? Why are we here? Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the nature of reality? Why are the laws of nature so finely tuned as to allow for the existence of beings like 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?

The most fundamental questions about the origins of the universe and of life itself, once the province of philosophy, now occupy the territory where scientists, philosophers, and theologians meet—if only to disagree. In their new book, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow present the most recent scientific thinking about the mysteries of the universe, in nontechnical language marked by both brilliance and simplicity.

In The Grand Design they explain that according to quantum theory, the cosmos does not have just a single existence or history, but rather that every possible history of the universe exists simultaneously. When applied to the universe as a whole, this idea calls into question the very notion of cause and effect. But the “top-down” approach to 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 further explain that we ourselves are the product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe, and show how quantum theory predicts the “multiverse”—the idea that ours is just one of many universes that appeared spontaneously out of nothing, each with different laws of nature.

Along the way Hawking and Mlodinow question the conventional concept of reality, posing a “model-dependent” theory of reality as the best we can hope to find. And they conclude with a riveting assessment of M-theory, an explanation of the laws governing us and our universe that is currently the only viable candidate for a complete “theory of everything.” If confirmed, they write, it will be the unified theory that Einstein was looking for, and the ultimate triumph of human reason.

A succinct, startling, and lavishly illustrated guide to discoveries that are altering our understanding and threatening some of our most cherished belief systems, The Grand Design is a book that will inform—and provoke—like no other.

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