This Report will be a little different from my others because I want to discuss, in a little more detail than usual, and with a little less wise-cracking humor, some of the philosophy of science behind, and explicitly stated in, Mr. Hawking's book. There are any number of reasons I want to do this. One has to do with my own research interests in philosophy. Mr. Hawking's book touches on at least two of them--philosophy of science and philosophy of religion. Moreover, his book exhibits philosophical attitudes that are quite prevelant in today's culture as well as influential and that alone is enough to make them worthy of discussion. Finally, and in addition to the others, I find myself in complete disagreement with those prevelant and influential philosophical attitudes. It will also come as no surprise to those who know me, that when I find myself at odds with a philosophical position, it's often because I find that position to be evil in the extreme. Knowing that alone should give you enough interest in this Report to follow it through to the bitter end. So, let's get to work.

      Let's start with what Mr. Hawking takes to be his overall research goal, to which the book in question, is something of an introduction. That goal is not just a comprehensive cosmological theory--a theory about the beginning and origin of the universe. It goes a little way beyond that, if you can imagine a grander topic than the beginning of the universe. It has to do with something called a "Grand Unified Theory," or, as Mr. Hawking puts it for the layman, "a theory of everything." It's a theory that will not only show how all the forces of nature are mere derivatives of one single grand natural force, but it will actually explain everything, literally, everything--its how, why, and where-from. Readers of the book can remember that this is just how Mr. Hawking puts his research in the opening chapter. And he's very serious about that.

      Let's pause to think exactly what such a theory entails and what it would be like. Would it explain the origin and ultimate destiny of the universe? Yes, on that grand scale it would. Would it explain where the basic forces of gravity, electricity, magnetism, and other forces come from? Yes, it would. Would it even explain how life evolves? In principle, we answer 'yes' again. Would it explain why I'm left handed rather than right handed? Surprisingly, the answer to this is 'yes' as well. O.K. then, what about what I had for breakfast this morning? Is that in the mix, too? Apparently that as well is cranked out by the theory. Is there anything the theory wouldn't explain? No, there isn't. Given any individual, the theory would unravel the complete history of that individual, be it animal, mineral, vegetable, or human being, even down to the very thoughts that individual thinks. Amazing you say? It most certainly is, but even a cursory reading of the first chapter to Mr. Hawking's book makes this unmistakable. It's so unmistakable that Mr Hawking tells you in the same chapter that the theory would even predict or explain that physicists would come up with it--the theory-- and believe it to be true. This is precisely what causes problems for Mr Hawkings research program (oops, I should say 'programme' since Mr Hawking is British). Let's examine why.

      Hawking, and other scientists as well as philosophers, often use the word 'explain' in a very restricted way. It doesn't necessarily mean to bring about some kind of intuitive grasp of a situation as when someone explains how to get to the post office, play checkers, or even drive a car. In the restricted sense it means to do a deduction from first principles, or from equations that act much like axioms in a geometry proof. So, starting with these first principles or equations, an explanation of why I'm left handed would not be something on the order of: "Oh, he's left handed because everyone in his family is right handed and he hates them all." Rather, the explanation would proceed as a deduction from equations describing occurences in the extreme past that yield the prediction that you are left handed. It would be the same with what you had for breakfast this morning, or yesterday, or tomorrow for that matter until the end of your life. The theory would crank out a prediction or statement that a state of affairs will be such-and-such the way a computer program would predict your mortgage payments for the next 30 years, only it would be a tad more complex. Then, of course, the prediction, just like the mortgage calculation, would have the force of inevitability. The theory would "explain" why you are doing what you are doing, or thinking what you are thinking, by showing that such is an inevitable consequence of the initial state of the universe.

      What would the first principles be like that yield such predictions? Very complicated equations for sure, but making use of only a very few basic parameters about the initial state of the universe at the so-called "beginning of time." Know this, and you know the history of every dust particle forever more. But the first principles, apart from their complexity, are of one definite kind. They are completely physical in nature. This is a point of extreme importance. It means the "explanations" that are unravelled with geometric inevitability are all physical in nature as well and there would be no inherently non-physical properties or laws in the universe. This means more than that there just would be no-- what people informally call-- "spiritual" side to the universe, in that poorly understood intuitive sense of the word. It means that all apparently non-physical laws and properties such as psychological laws, ethical laws, juridical laws, temporal laws, economic laws, sociological laws, biological laws, logical laws, etc., would all have to be explained, ultimately, in terms that refer only to physical laws and properties. If they couldn't be so explained, they would have to be treated as superstition.

      Now we are ready to set the first problem. Given what has just been said, everything you now think, do or say is the result of a physical inevitability that began eons ago at the "beginning" of time. Because it is all a result of physical inevitability, the things you think, do or say can't be the result of an independent search for truth based upon the weighing of reasons or evidence. You believe, think, and act the way you do because of physical necessity--the same kind of necessity that governs the planets in their movements or the ocean's tides. You, therefore, don't believe what you do because of epistemic relationships between truth and evidence. You don't believe anything because it is true. You believe what you do because of the way the atoms in your brain happen to move. Some of the things you believe may well be true. But that's beside the point. The fact that you may happen to have some true beliefs in your purely physical brain is the result of coincidence. Since your beliefs are not arrived at by epistemic nor logical processes, and can never be arrived at in such a manner, there's no way to know that any of them are true.

      Now for the clincher. This result holds for any belief you might have, including the scientist's belief in the Grand Unified Theory of Everything. If such a theory is the truth, then no one who believes it could ever know it to be true. The epistemic link between truth and belief is forever severed. Philosopher Roy Clouser of The College of New Jersey calls such theories "self-assumptively incoherent" (see his The Myth of Religious Neutrality, Chapter 4, section 5). To see more clearly why this is a problem let's take a simpler example, one that, unfortunately, I've run across many times before.

      Just prior to the 2000 census, the Bureau of the Census thought it was going to be in a lot of trouble trying to take a head count of the country. One of the things the Clintonista Census Bureau tried to push through Congress was the use of statistical estimates to arrive at population counts instead of doing door to door interrogations. One of the reasons they put forward for doing this was a bit on the odd side if you think about it. The Bureau said, over and over, that during the 1990 census, using traditional door to door methods, they had failed to count over 4 million Americans. Now, what occurred to me was, if they had failed to count these people, how in the hell did they know there were 4 million of them? You see, the claim, if true, destroys the very ability to know it's truth. The claim may well be true. There may well be 4 million uncounted Americans out there. But there's no way in hell that you're going to know it without counting them. Mr Hawking's problem is on exactly the same order as this one.

      Mr. Hawking, though, is a bit more honest than the U.S. Census Bureau, and a bit more intelligent (for that matter, so is my dog). He admits to this very problem with the theory. He knows the theory itself destroys its own claim to be known to be true. So this is not just the isolated musings of a disaffected philosopher who fails to understand him:

"Yet if there really is a complete unified theory, it would also presumably determine our actions. And so the theory itself would determine the outcome of our search for it! And why should it determine that we come to the right conclusions from the evidence? Might it not equally well determine that we draw the wrong conclusion? Or no conclusion at all?" (page 12 in the 1988 edition, pages 12 to 13 in the 1996 edition.)

      There are two problems this fix. One very serious, one less so. Let's take the latter. Let's grant that Mr Hawking's evolutionary fix is correct and we can rest confident that most of our beliefs are true because we are now alive. (I won't say 'all' of our beliefs because that is quite demonstrably false, as we all know!) It still is the case that we can't know that any of them are true! We still believe them because we are forced to believe them, not because we have weighed evidence, used logic and pursued truth through epistemic relationships. To use a Biblical metaphor, God put true words into the mouth of Balam's ass, but he was still just an ass. Furthermore, even if most of our beliefs were true, we wouldn't know which were the true ones, which the false.

      Now for the more serious problem. Mr Hawking's response is question begging. Our belief in evolutionary theory is still a belief we have and it, too, is not exempt from the self-assumptive incoherency forced upon us by the Grand Unified Theory of Everything. But Mr. Hawking acts as though it were. Evolutionary theory would be believed for the same reason the scientist would believe the Theory of Everything--physical necessity forces us to belive it. Hence, if the Theory of Everything is true, we surely couldn't know that evolutionary theory is true, either. So the Grand Unified Theory of Everything is still self-defeating.

      For some of you I know your patience has been tried mightily by this installment of The Rice Report® so this is probably a good juncture at which to pause. In our next science edition we will explore, with the same dialectical force, how Mr Hawking attempts to deal with time and why he must try to give all temporal notions a purely physical explanation. We'll also explore why that fails, too!