Still scientists hold out for such a theory, this is indeed the goal of science: “A complete, consistent, unified theory is only the first step: our goal is a complete understanding of the events around us, and of our own existence… 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.” Instead, we break the problem up into bits and invent a number of partial theories.” Yet as Hawking notes “It turns out to be very difficult to devise a theory to describe the universe all in one go.

Much of latter half of the book is devoted to exploring specifically the various theories which surround our universe and its conception, with the goal being the formation of a grand unified theory of everything. The goal in all of this is to lay out an understanding of how the universe works as well as how we came to view it in this manner. At each juncture he lays out the thought of the period and describes how each advancement came upon us, moving from a geocentric to heliocentric model of the universe, through the formulation of the first laws of nature up to things such as red shift and the anthropic principle, general relativity, quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle and black holes. In a very readable and even often humorous manner Hawking lays out this history, tracing its roots all the way back to Aristotle, through Galileo to Newton all the way up into the modern age. A Brief History of Time is Stephen Hawking‘s attempt at taking the advances of science throughout history and presenting them in a readable fashion for the layman.

A brief history of time