Stephen Hawking/Leonard Mlodinow’s: The Grand Design

As scientific advances continue at an incredibly rapid rate, it seems that the universe is getting harder and harder to understand. Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow have written The Grand Design, a book that is intended to present the latest and most influential theories of quantum physics to those who may be unfamiliar with the terms that are being used to often in the academia world. “Quantum physics” gets thrown around in pop culture mostly to wow the audience with concepts they have never learned. Thankfully, this book does its job well. As Hawking explains, quantum physics is the perspective of physics that is used to try and understand everything about the universe. Why are we here? Why are we governed by these particular laws instead of others? All of these questions have come to the minds of almost everyone at some point in time, and all of these questions are looked at in The Grand Design.

Given the nature of the book, it is hard to pinpoint exactly what the book is centrally about. A great deal of the text revolves around the implications or evidence that lends to the belief in a multiverse: that our universe is simply one of many that was formed from nothing. Another key theme of the book is the unbelievably high probability that any formed universe would be unable to sustain life such as humans. The sheer fact that we exist appears to be miraculous. Hawking takes the reader through an in-depth (for those who are not physicists) look at these ideas, examining both the impossibly small, and the improbably large. The mood of Hawking’s description is, arguably, the book’s greatest strength. This is not a dumbed-down book in any sense. Hawking explains the crucial details of every theory clearly and intricately. If you have any interest in learning about the astonishing field of quantum physics that is becoming more and more prevalent in humanity’s scientific and existential advancement, then Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow’s The Grand Design is a great place to start: you will almost assuredly finish the book feeling confident that you have an impressive understanding of most of the important topics in the field.