The Theory of Everything<\/em><\/a>, about the famous cosmologist Stephen Hawking and his remarkable first wife, Jane Hawking. \u00a0It\u2019s a sad movie in many ways \u2014 and not only for the obvious reason of Dr. Hawking\u2019s horrific illness. \u00a0But it\u2019s also something of a triumphant one. \u00a0He died this past March at the age of 76, despite the medical prognosis given him at age 21 that granted him only two years to live. \u00a0And he made astonishing contributions to astrophysics and cosmology.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was fun for my wife and me to see, in the film, continual scenes of Cambridge, a place that we love (and where we\u2019ve spent some time and would like to have spent more time than we have), and to watch a film in which such titanic scientific figures as Dennis Sciama (oddly unnamed in the film, I think, though playing an important role as Hawking\u2019s dissertation chair and eventual faculty colleague) and Roger Penrose and the 2017 Nobel Physics laureate Kip Thorne make appearances.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thorne, incidentally, is currently an atheist. \u00a0But he was born to an academically oriented Mormon family in Logan, Utah, and he doesn\u2019t take the fashionably contemptuous view toward religious faith that some scientists (or would-be science boosters) do: \u00a0\u201cThere are,\u201d he says, \u201clarge numbers of my finest colleagues who are quite devout and believe in God, ranging from an abstract humanist God to a very concrete Catholic or Mormon God. There is no fundamental incompatibility between science and religion. I happen to not believe in God.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although it\u2019s been faulted for failing to spend much time on Stephen Hawking\u2019s actual theories, The Theory of Everything<\/em> is, intermittently, about the relationship between science and faith. \u00a0Hawking didn\u2019t believe in God. \u00a0But his (eventual-ex) wife, who herself earned a doctorate in medieval Spanish and French literature from Cambridge, is a believing Christian. \u00a0So the film goes back and forth on the topic, including an important scene revolving around a famous passage from his Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays<\/em> (1993), although I think that the film misattributes it to his 1988 bestseller\u00a0A Brief History of Time<\/em>:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, 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 \u2014 for then we would know the mind of God<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Early in the film, when they first meet at a party, Stephen explains cosmology to Jane as \u201ca religion for intelligent atheists,\u201d and I think there\u2019s some possible truth in that quip. \u00a0Slightly later, Jane asks Stephen whether, as it seemed, he\u2019d really never been in a church, and he responds that he had once been in a church, but that it had been many years earlier.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m aware of nothing to suggest that Stephen Hawking was ever particularly interested in, or knowledgeable about, religious faith, though, as he himself observed on several occasions, cosmology does address certain questions that, in the past, were exclusively the domain of theology.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
David Bentley Hart\u2019s somewhat demanding\u00a0The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, and Bliss<\/em><\/a>, though it scarcely mentions Stephen Hawking, does an excellent job in explaining why such comments of Hawking\u2019s as \u201cBecause there is a law\u00a0such as gravity, the universe\u00a0can and will create itself from nothing\u201d (The Grand Design<\/em>, 2010, written with physicist Leonard Mlodinow) really \u2014 and quite spectacularly \u2014 miss the point.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 Some of you, no doubt, saw the relatively recent British film The Theory of Everything, about the famous cosmologist Stephen Hawking and his remarkable first wife, Jane Hawking. \u00a0It\u2019s a sad movie in many ways \u2014 and not only for the obvious reason of Dr. Hawking\u2019s horrific illness. \u00a0But it\u2019s also something of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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