Critique Paper on A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking: (for 12/15/00)

Stephen Hawking is a remarkable man. He has overcome a crippling disease to become one of the world's foremost authorities in theoretical physics, utilizing the latest technologies to continue to communicate his brilliant and enlightened theories to the world. But perhaps even more remarkable than that, he can make the average person understand these theories, as well as the theories of those who came before him. In fact, as he states at the beginning of the book, this is A Brief History of Time's first and most important purpose.
	Hawking begins this book by acknowledging the people who have helped him over the years, and then starts to describe our picture of the universe in Chapter 1: Our Picture of the Universe. He then continues to discuss space and time, especially in relationship to Einstein's theory of general relativity. Next, he deals with quantum mechanics, especially one of its most important points, the uncertainty principle. He then discusses some of the smaller particles, such as quarks (which come in six flavors and three colors), and then moves on to the subject of black holes and other possible singularities, such as the origin and fate of the universe. Finally, for the first major time since Chapter 2: Space and Time, Hawking discusses the nature of time itself, and why we see it flowing forwards and not backwards, before coming to the second-to-final chapter, Chapter 10: The Unification of Physics. Here he talks about his hopes that mankind will be able to put together an ultimate theory of the universe, from which we will be able to calculate and predict all events and outcomes to a reasonable degree of accuracy. At last, his inspiring conclusion manages to wrap up the material covered in the book while turning our attention to the coming times.
	Throughout the book, Hawking consistently writes his work as a dialog between himself and the reader. If there's something to be explained, then Hawking will give the reader an explanation in the simplest terms possible. This is good, because this is a piece about physics for the lay populace. Very little understanding of how physics works, aside from the very basics, need be known by the reader for the piece to be understood. His arrangement of the information seems to be well thought out, as he does not as a rule mention theories or particles much before he describes them in fair detail.
	Over all I think that Hawking was successful in his attempt. Setting out to write a book about theoretical physics that is at once informative and easy to read, I think that he accomplished this very well. The information is interesting and well presented, his examples really help to clarify the theorems presented, and it's even funny occasionally (case in point: turtle theorem). The only major thing that I specifically remember not understanding is superstring theory, as Hawking did not seem to explain exactly what the significance of superstrings was, but this could have easily been an oversight on my part. A Brief History of Time is, indeed, a remarkable book by a remarkable man.