Time Lines
Reflections on the life and thought of Stephen Hawking
Dave Crofts, 24th May 2004
Beginnings have always been important, and none more so than the beginning of the universe. Humanity has long displayed a preoccupation with ideas of origins. We want to know where everything came from, and have posited many theories as to the answer. It's a question satirised by Douglas Adams at the beginning of his science-fiction comedy The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, sequel to the popular The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy [1]:
The story so far:
In the beginning the universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
Many races believe that it was created by some sort of god, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle V believe that the entire universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure.
The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call The Coming of The Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than 50 arms each, who are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel.
However, the Great Green Arkleseizure theory is not widely accepted outside Viltvodle V and so, the universe being the puzzling place it is, other explanations are constantly being sought.
And one scientist whose rather more serious explanations have attracted perhaps more attention in recent years than any other's, both inside and outside his specialist field, is Stephen Hawking. Currently Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, Hawking's work on the Big Bang theory, on black holes and on the nature of time has, though undoubtedly indebted to numerous predecessors, broken new and exciting ground. His most famous book, A Brief History of Time, topped the bestseller lists - an almost unique accomplishment for a book about physics. Whilst Hawking - as he himself would assert - is no Galileo, Newton or Einstein, he remains arguably the most famous living scientist in the world today and a modern intellectual icon.
But why should Christians take any sort of an interest in Hawking's work? After all, he has his explanation of origins and we have ours, and never the twain shall meet... This attitude, however, cannot be seriously upheld. Regardless of personal interests, we cannot afford to entirely divorce discoveries about the nature of the universe from what we know about the God who made it. Indeed, whilst a thorough understanding of it requires time and mental capacity more than the average man in the street can muster, much of Hawking's work is, believe it or not, exciting and very thought-provoking. Furthermore, the man behind the science is an equally fascinating subject, and it is to discuss both Stephen Hawking's science and his life that this paper aims.
So, in the immortal words of Jennifer Aniston in the L'Oreal commercial: "Here comes the science bit. Concentrate."
The Science - It's About Time...
To adequately summarise a century and more of cosmological theory and discovery in a matter of paragraphs is a task beyond any research group and therefore one not attempted here. For the keener reader, however, an excellent first port of call is David Wilkinson's book God, Time & Stephen Hawking [2]. In the meantime, try to make do with this cursory glance at just what Hawking's theories have said and why they are so important...
Let's start with a simple concept. The universe is expanding (as discovered by Edwin Hubble in 1929). Galaxies are spreading out at a rate of thousands of miles an hour, just as if you drew stars on an uninflated balloon and then blew it up. The universe therefore used to be smaller than it is now. And a long, long time ago, it must have been much, much smaller.
Hold that thought, whilst we introduce another scientist. Roger Penrose, like Hawking based in Cambridge, had spent the 1960s doing work on black holes - something we've probably all heard of but can't claim to understand. In simple terms a black hole is a collapsed star whose gravitational pull is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape it. Scientists know they exist because light passing close to a black hole (but not close enough to be sucked in) gets bent and distorted. What Penrose said was that at the centre of each black hole is an object of infinite density - i.e. enormous mass in an infinitesimally small space. And he called this object a singularity.
Here's where Hawking comes in. He took the logical inference that the universe must have been very small at some point and combined it with Penrose's work on singularities to show that just as black holes end in a singularity, the whole universe started as a singularity, and that the expansion from that singularity is what has become known as the Big Bang. This means that once upon a time the entire universe was smaller than a full stop. That will no doubt mess with your head, but it's just the tip of the iceberg.
You see, the thing about singularities is that where one occurs the normal laws of physics break down and cease to apply. This obviously makes investigating the Big Bang rather difficult, since the usual scientific framework requires modification, if not reinvention. It is for this reason that, though cosmologists know what happened a split second (10-43 seconds to be precise) after the Big Bang, they can't, under normal rules, go right back to the singularity itself.
Back at the start of the twentieth century, Einstein revolutionised the world of physics by deducing that time was not a separate entity from space but another dimension, like the three spatial dimensions with which we are familiar. We therefore operate in something called space-time. And the singularity with which Hawking proposes the universe began comprised not just space but space-time. So it is only as the singularity expanded that time came into existence.
Hawking and others have developed numerous mathematical tools to deal with the pre-time era, such as the concept of imaginary time (time in imaginary numbers), but space and understanding preclude an exploration of them here. The important thing to recognise is that Hawking's work postulates a universe that has no beginning in time, because time did not exist until the universe existed. And because normal physical rules of cause and effect are bound by time, the event that triggered the Big Bang need not have a cause. As he says, "The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would be neither created or destroyed. It would just BE." [3]
This is theologically provocative stuff and explains why Carl Sagan, in his Foreword to A Brief History of Time, was able to remark that: "This is a book about God, or perhaps the absence of God" [4]. But before we delve into the implications of this for the Christian faith, we need to examine the man behind the theories and take a look at not just the time but the life of Stephen Hawking.
The Life - Mind Over Matter?
If we were playing a word association game and started with "Stephen Hawking," it's a pretty safe bet that not far behind words and phrases like "physics," "time" and "Big Bang" would come "motor neurone disease". Biographers, journalists, even colleagues have noted the irony that one of the finest minds of the generation is housed in a wasting body incapable of more than slight movement. But just as there is more to Hawking's science than black holes and Big Bangs, there is more to his life than the disease that has physically crippled him.
Born in Oxford in 1942, Stephen Hawking displayed an early passion for mathematics and physics that led him to a first class honours degree in Natural Sciences from Oxford University and then on to Cambridge to do research in Cosmology. This move to Cambridge, however, coincided with a more sinister development: Hawking found himself becoming increasingly clumsy and unbalanced, and was eventually admitted to hospital where he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a type of motor neurone disease that renders the muscles of the body gradually inoperative whilst leaving mental function completely unimpaired. Hawking was given just two years to live.
Some 40 years later, the doctors who made those predictions have been proved spectacularly wrong. Hawking has been confined to a wheelchair for the last 30 of those years and, since a tracheotomy operation in 1985, has required round-the-clock care and the use of a voice synthesiser to speak, but he is very much alive. The interesting question is what it was that pushed him to keep going.
You might expect his motivation to have been his research - the insatiable desire to delve into the deep mysteries of the universe and solve the questions of the origin of the cosmos. But Hawking's own accounts of the period following his diagnosis reveal that this was not the case [5]:
In fact, although there was a cloud hanging over my future, I found, to my surprise, that I was enjoying life in the present more than before. I began to make progress with my research, and I got engaged to a girl called Jane Wilde, whom I had met just about the time my condition was diagnosed. That engagement changed my life. It gave me something to live for.
Whilst Stephen Hawking will be remembered chiefly for his science, there is every chance that he would never have made the discoveries he has were it not for the support of his family. Although he divorced Jane in 1990, they produced 3 children and now have a grandchild, and Hawking is still something of a family man. Relationships drive him, not physics. In spite of his disease he describes himself as "lucky" - not just because its slow progress allowed him time to make mind-bending discoveries but because it afforded him time to have, in his own words, "a very attractive family" [5].
The Implications - 3 Pitfalls, 2 Positives and a Plug
Where does all this leave the casual observer? If we are not especially interested in cosmology or related to Stephen Hawking, what can we really learn from the man? Well, the combination of his scientific endeavour and his human determination highlight, amongst other things, 3 pitfalls, 2 positives and a plug.
Pitfall #1 - Atheism
Many people (although not Hawking himself) have concluded from all this talk of a spontaneous, self-starting universe that there is no God. This is clearly a ridiculous inference, and we shouldn't let anyone tell us otherwise. Indeed, to believe that the universe began of its own accord takes as much faith as it does to believe in a divine Creator.
Pitfall #2 - Deism
Deism is the belief in a god who starts the universe off but then steps back to leave it to its own devices. Such a god is not actively involved in his creation and is even bound by the physical laws of that which he has created. This is the sort of god Hawking has in mind when he says that the laws of physics "may have originally been decreed by God, but it appears that he has since left the universe to evolve according to a set of laws and does not intervene to break these laws" [6]. But as Christians we know God to be the Creator and Sustainer of all things, who has at times overruled the laws of nature to work miracles and display his mighty power.
Pitfall #3 - 'God of the gaps'
If we make the mistake as seeing science and God as two entirely separate ways of understanding the natural phenomena we can observe then we are left with a 'God of the gaps'. We explain things by science, but when science proves insufficient we put it down to God. The problem with this kind of thinking is that it diminishes the role and power of God - he is simply in charge of the bits we can't figure out, the leftovers, if you like. And as people like Stephen Hawking discover more and more, the gaps get smaller and smaller and God gets squeezed out of the equation altogether. Hawking seems to believe in the supremacy of science - that at some point in the future man will be able to figure out some kind of 'Theory of Everything.' The Bible warns against such arrogance:
"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding."
Job 38:4
Indeed, the last few chapters of the book of Job see God telling Job in no uncertain terms that he alone made, comprehends and rules the universe and humanity should absolutely not go getting ideas above its station...
Positive #1 - Nothing to fear
By contrast, we should be able to hold science and God as two complimentary ways of explaining the universe. Christians have nothing to fear from scientific discovery. Science done correctly will not threaten the Bible's authority, because God is not going to say one thing in his word and then contradict himself in the world. So when engaging in discussions about black holes, big bangs and beginnings, Christians should be able to both listen and contribute with confidence.
Positive #2 - Something to marvel at
The Bible tells us that: "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork" (Psalm 19:1), and surely the more we know of the heavens, the more we should see of the glory of God? To know that God made the vast and varied cosmos from a microscopic speck does nothing but enhance our wonder at creation. For the Christian, mankind's glimpses into deep space reveal a wonderful Creator who is all the more remarkable for being personally knowable in Jesus.
A Brief Plug
It has already received a mention, but David Wilkinson's book God, Time and Stephen Hawking really is an excellent resource for anyone who wishes to delve deeper into the subject. It strikes a healthy balance between the scientific technicalities and the Christian response, and is readable without being patronising. Moreover, Wilkinson is an expert in both cosmology and theology, so he writes with a degree of authority the authors of this paper can only feign as we dip our toes in the water of a very large ocean indeed...
References
- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Tor Books, 1980)
- David Wilkinson, God, Time & Stephen Hawking, Monarch Books, 2001
- Stephen W Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Chapter 8, Bantam Books New York, 1988
- Carl Sagan, Forward in [3]
- http://www.hawking.org.uk/disable/dindex.html
- Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Chapter 8, Bantam Books New York, 1988