'A Brief History of Time' - Thoughts on the great work
I have heard great things about ‘A Brief History of Time’. It has been on my reading list for as long as I can remember. I can tell with absolute certainty that this book deserves all the praise it gets. I had a collection of facts, partial understanding of some concepts and theories, and titbits of information about astrophysics stowed away in my head. This book not only aided me in organising the knowledge and making connections, but also taught me how a scientist would go about using information such as this and experimental data to create theories and hypothesize. I must admit that I was quite struck by the length and nuance of the verbal arguments and chains of thought Hawking embarks upon in the book; being more used to equations, formulae and numbers, these quasi-philosophical discussions and ‘proofs’ gave me substantial discomfort. But the more I think about it, I realise more the effectiveness of this kind of reasoning. The mathematics will let one make predictions (limited, ...