The Curious Case of Stephen Hawking

Countless newspaper articles compare him to Einstein.
Numerous others remind us that he held the Lucasian Professorship at Cambridge, “formerly held by Isaac Newton”. In an episode in Star Trek, he appears on the spaceship’s holodeck playing cards with both Newton and Einstein – and wins.
Clearly, in the echelons of scientific achievement, Stephen Hawking is at the pinnacle, with the greatest of the great.

Or is he really?
Let’s do a little comparison.

Newton can safely be called the father of theoretical physics.
While scientists like Galileo and Kepler underscored the importance of experiments and observations to understand the world, Newton pioneered the use of mathematical modelling to explain observed phenomena and predict new ones.
His most famous achievement was formulating his laws of motion, and the inverse square law of gravity which explained both the fall of an apple and the orbit of the moon and planets with unprecedented accuracy.
In the process, he also invented Calculus – undoubtedly the most influential branch of mathematics we have seen in the last five centuries.
Newton’s book, Principia Mathematica, triggered a revolution in human thought, revealing the universe as amenable to human understanding through mathematical laws.

In 1905, Einstein unified Newtonian mechanics with Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism through his special theory of relativity, which made highly unintuitive, but completely correct predictions.
A decade later, he went even further, to create the general theory of relativity – a truly revolutionary theory that unified Newton’s law of gravity with special relativity by showing that gravity was the result of the curvature of space-time due to matter and energy.
General Relativity is one of the great pillars of modern physics, subsuming Newton’s laws of gravity and predicting a plethora of new phenomena – from black holes to the Big Bang.
Einstein also made very significant contributions to Quantum Mechanics, the other great pillar of modern physics. Most notably, he was the first to analyze light as a stream of particles rather than a wave.

Now for Stephen Hawking.
Fundamental areas of science established? None.
Influential new branches of math invented? None.
Any new fundamental particles predicted, as in the case of Paul Dirac? Nope.
How about a revolutionizing to an existing theory, like Richard Feynman? Not at all.
Don’t mean to rude or anything, but what has he done, then?

Two things, mainly.
In the late 1960’s, Roger Penrose proved a theorem to the effect that under certain conditions, general relativity predicts the occurrence of “singularities” – points in space where the laws of physics break down.
Hawking applied Penrose’s results to cosmological models, showing that under generic assumptions the point of origin of the Universe – the “moment of creation”, so to speak – is a singularity. Note that this is not a new theory, but a mathematical theorem derived from an existing theory (general relativity).

In 1974, Hawking proved the result which made him famous.
Using results from quantum field theory, he showed that black holes radiate energy and eventually evaporate. This created a huge stir, because black holes were by definition, objects from which nothing could escape, not even light. This was a strong indication that combining general relativity with quantum field theory could lead to unexpected results.
Hawking’s result has never been experimentally verified, but is accepted as true. Other scientists arrived at the same conclusion from a several different approaches, and the result explains a number of other theoretical issues in the field.

Impressive contributions? Certainly.
Worthy of a Nobel prize? Possibly.
Comparable to Newton and Einstein? Not by a very long run.
Then why is Hawking thus compared in the media? How has he gained a level of public prominence completely disproportionate to his actual achievements?
Why did his popular book, A Brief History of Time, top the New York Times bestseller list for three months straight, despite the fact that most readers claimed not to understand it?

Many think it is due to his physical condition which gets media attention– Hawking has been paralyzed by motor neuron disease since his early twenties.
In my opinion, the real answer lies elsewhere.

Grandiose Claims

Most great scientists are noted for their profound humility in the face of the universe.
The famous quote of Newton, comparing himself to a little boy playing on the shore of the ocean of knowledge comes to mind.
Now let’s hear Hawking:
“My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”

A simple goal indeed!! This is not an isolated statement.
In my view, audaciously grandiose claims like these play a key role in explaining Hawking’s arc to scientific superstardom.
While most popular science books are content to explore the wonders of the Universe and explain some of their workings, A Brief History of Time promises nothing less than an Ultimate Understanding – an answer to all the biggest questions ever asked my mankind.

In the book, Hawking claims that we are on the verge of a revolution in our understanding of the cosmos – not just any revolution, but the one to end them all.
We are on the verge of completing our quest to understand the ultimate laws of the universe, says Hawking. We will soon be in possession of a Theory of Everything – a grand unifying principle that subsumes all of physics and explains all features of the cosmos hitherto unknown, including the physical properties of all the fundamental particles, the forces and interactions between them and even the underlying structure of space and time.

What will follow thereafter is nothing short of intellectual Nirvana:
“If we do discover a complete theory.... we shall all be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God.”
A parenthetic claim – never directly made by Hawking, but widely inferred by the media and lay public – is that he would be the one to achieve this ultimate triumph of reason.



The grand vision promulgated by Hawking is, of course, vastly misleading.
Even if a unified theory of physics is found, its real applications will be primarily in esoteric realms far beyond the reach of experiment or observation, such the centres of black holes and the moment of the Big Bang. While this would certainly be impressive, the discussion of "why it is that we and the universe exist” has proceeded quite far without it.
Our current theories of physics, while incomplete and partial, have nevertheless been very successful in explaining how the world around us emerged from the blazing radiation of the Big Bang. Most areas of physics itself, let alone the other sciences, would not be impacted at all by the discovery of a “complete theory”.

Furthermore, Hawking’s own role in unifying physics has been minimal.
Currently, the most popular approach for unification is String Theory. If it succeeds in producing a Theory of Everything – a very big ‘If’ – the mantle of Einstein would pass to Edward Witten. Vastly respected within the theoretical physics community for his path-breaking contributions and insights, Dr. Witten is virtually unknown to the common man due to his preference for sticking to science rather than airing extravagant claims.

Hawking has never been at the forefront of the unification program, or even a significant contributor. But his starry eyed vision of the imminent arrival of the unified theory, his self declared goal of “complete understanding of the universe”, his constant references to God in his popular books and public lectures, has given the quest of unify physics an almost religious significance in the public psyche – with the Theory of Everything as God and Stephen Hawking as It’s soon-to-be prophet.

Unfortunately, scientific gurus, unlike religious ones, must test their claims against reality.
So how has Hawking fared?

The Rather Pathetic Design

It is now past 22 years since A Brief History of Time was written and over three decades since Hawking’s first public pronouncement that the end of physics was imminent.
The unified theory is nowhere in sight, and while string theorists keep ploughing on and claiming progress, their best efforts are yet to yield a single experimental prediction.

It is also becoming abundantly clear that even if a unified theory is eventually discovered, Stephen Hawking’s name will not figure on the credits list.
Hawking seems to be having trouble digesting this fact – his strategy is to alternate between suggesting that no unified theory is possible (sour grapes, anyone?) and declaring that it has already been found (no way).

His latest popular book, The Grand Design, is a good example of this.
He starts by saying that there may be no unified theory of physics, but just a bunch of “observer dependent theories”, whatever that means. The next moment, he is spinning on a dime to declare that “M-theory” is the unified theory.
Furthermore, apparently, M-theory predicts that the universe can spontaneously originate from absolute nothingness, so God is not necessary (once again God appears to help Hawking make headlines and sell copies).
So there! Dr. Hawking has Explained It All. Hip, hip, hooray!

Nobody is convinced.
Because M-theory makes no predictions. The reason being that nobody even knows what M-theory is.
Let me explain.

In 1995, Dr. Edward Witten whom we saw earlier, demonstrated the presence of a number of “dualities” between various versions of string theory – roughly speaking, a difficult problem in one version could be translated into an easy one in another version.
This led to the hope that all the string theories were special aspects of a greater theory subsuming them all, which was termed “M-theory”.
In Witten’s own words: “The M stands for magic, mystery or matrix according to taste”.
Thus M-theory is a hypothetical theory which may exist – not an existing theory with concrete predictions.

Similarly, the spontaneous origin of the universe is not a prediction of any theory we have – it is merely speculated that a unified theory of physics which merges general relativity and quantum mechanics might allow something like this to happen.
The “grand design” revealed by Hawking is, thus, misleading on many levels.
Much like religious gurus who refuse to admit a mistake, Hawking attempts to “explain it all” through obfuscation and incorrect statements.

So, where does this leave us?
In my view, with a lesson that we keep forgetting despite endless reminders.
We humans are very small creatures in an incredibly vast Universe and our attempts to unravel its mysteries work best when we work sincerely to answer small questions.
It is only by carefully knitting together the answers to those little questions that the big picture slowly emerges.
By contrast, whenever an individual pompously proclaims an “Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything”, it inevitably turns out to be incorrect or a meaningless 42.

Serious students and followers of science would do well to ignore the self-aggrandizing hype of Stephen Hawking, our media-made “Einstein”, and heed the words of the real one:
“Enough for me an inkling of the marvellous structure of Reality, the endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in Nature.”