tonight the time before time began the
universe black holes God and the laws of
science Professor Steven Hawking Dr Carl
San and Arthur Clark discuss the
Mysteries man faces as he starts to
explore the Stars
[Music]
Dreadful disabilities prevent Steven
Hawking from speaking a word but he's
risen above them to become a brilliant
mathematician and teacher using a
computer-driven voice synthesizer he's
told the world How the Universe began
and now he's seeking the ultimate theory
of how it
works Arthur C Clark invented the
communication satellite long before the
technology existed to launch one that
vision of the future fathered the global
village his novels and stories including
2001 A Space Odyssey have inspired a
generation of real life
astronauts Carl Sean sent Man's first
messages to the Stars aboard NASA space
probes he's sure we're not alone in the
cosmic Wilderness Dr Sean joined
discussion from Cornell University in
New York state so I checked whether he
could hear us over one of Arthur's
satellites yes communication satellite
technology is working very well thank
you Arthur can you hear all right I can
hear fine and Professor Hawking are you
in touch with Carl
San yes Professor Hawking in fact has
just made publishing history by writing
a book about hard theoretical science
which has outsold even Michael Jackson
in the bestseller s it's called A Brief
History of Time and we'll be talking
about the concepts that are in it now
Steven Hawking is engaged in a search
for the ultimate answer a grand unified
theory that would explain everything
Stephen Hawking that is quite an agenda
how are you getting on with
it let me just explain that what happens
when Professor Hawking wishes to to
speak he lost his voice a couple of
years ago and now has to use a voice
synthesizer and he can control A Squeeze
Box in his hand and on the vdu screen on
the arm of his chair he's got a
vocabulary which Scrolls through and he
can pick out the words that he wants and
these words are then assembled into a
sentence and when the sentence is ready
then he can process it through the the
voice synthesizer so whenever you're
ready professor we'd like to hear from
you in the last 300 years we have
discovered the laws that govern the
universe in all but the most extreme
conditions I think there is a reasonable
chance that we may find a complete set
of laws by the end of the century if we
don't blow ourselves up
first if we do find a complete unified
theory it will be a great Triumph not
just for scientists but for ordinary
people as
well in time the unified theory would be
simplified and taught in schools at
least in
outline then everyone would have some
idea of how the universe
works well that is a tremendous Vision
now Carl Sean you wrote an introduction
to the book and one of the Striking
things that you said is that it's only
children nowadays who ask the big
questions because they don't know enough
not to what I was trying to get across
was uh the notion that the school
systems uh it seems to me have a uh a um
attitude of discouragement of asking
fundamental questions if uh if a five or
six-year-old asks why the Moon is round
or why grass is green the usual adult
answer at least in my experience is to
discourage the child say what what shape
did you expect the moon to be square or
what color did you expect the grass to
be blue uh instead of saying that uh
those are interesting questions let's
try to find out the answer or maybe
Nobody Knows the answer and uh and when
you grow up you'll be able to discover
the answer it would be very healthy for
the human species if uh there were less
discouragement and more scientists
Arthur Clark one of the reasons why I
write science fiction is because it does
free the imagination and does inspire
people to become scientists and
astronauts many astronauts have made me
feel A Very Old Man by coming up and
saying to me you know your books turned
me on when I was a small boy excellent
now I have planned a a reasonably finite
structure for our little colloquium and
I'd like to start if I may with
Professor Hawking how did the universe
start with a big
bang we observe that distance galaxies
are moving away from
us this means that they must have been
closer together in the
past in fact one can show that all the
galaxies must have been on top of each
other about 15 billion years
ago this was a real big bang not the
puny thing that took place on the stock
exchange a couple of years
ago it was the beginning of the universe
and of time
itself anything that happened before the
Big Bang could not affect what happened
after so we can neglect events before
the Big Bang and say that time began at
the big
bang after the big bang we believe that
the Universe expanded in a very rapid
inflationary manner
again this inflation in the universe
quite puts modern economic inflation in
the
shade an increase of billions of
billions of percent in a tiny fraction
of a
second of course that was before the
present
government during the inflationary
period the universe burrowed heavily
from its gravity vitational energy to
finance the creation of more
matter the result was a Triumph for the
economics of CHS a vigorous and
expanding Universe filled with material
objects the de of gravitational energy
will not have to be repayed until the
end of the
universe I'd like to stay with this
basic proposition for the time being The
Big Bang Theory and to come to you Carl
San could you help me by putting into
layman's terms what was involved with
this big
bang well we uh here we are on a planet
which is uh about 5,000 million years
old uh the sun around which it goes is
not much older it is part of a
galaxy uh which is perhaps uh 10 or
12,000 million years old which is one of
perhaps hundreds of thousands of
millions of other galaxies and none of
this planets Suns galaxies was around at
the time of the Big Bang at the time of
the big bang There was uh energy
Elementary particles which slowly
evolved into the kind of universe we
know today we are the product of a grand
evolutionary sequence Cosmic Evolution
uh about which we are only occasion Al
aware one of the Great accomplishments
of Dr Hawking is to plug us better in to
the knowledge of this long evolutionary
sequence well what I have in in my mind
is a picture that Carl San had been
leading me towards of U the whole
universe in quite amazingly small
packages like putting the whole world
into a matchbox as it were immensely
dense and immensely tiny and in fact so
tiny it's it's kind of Disappearing into
a little point is this the is this the
the the earliest imaginable point that
that our minds are taking us to so far
Carl San well the uh as Dr Hawkings said
the galaxies are expanding uh running
away from each other the further away
they are from each other the faster they
are running away if you run the cosmic
movie back into time you come to a
moment perhaps 15,000 million years ago
in which all the matter in the universe
was touching in if you like uh a point
and uh a key unanswered and perhaps
unanswerable question is where did all
of that matter energy come from what was
before that uh and if it was made from
nothing who made it and uh who made the
maker uh and of course an infinite
regress behind that is the universe
still expanding fast I mean is there a
lot more room in space as as I think of
it for the the universe to carry on
getting bigger as far as I know nothing
in the way and uh the expansion
continues the question is whether there
is sufficient matter in the universe
matter that we have not yet counted that
will slow the expansion down stop it and
have the expanding Universe followed by
a collapsing universe or whether there
is not enough matter to stop the
expansion and so the expansion then
continues Forever This is an
observational question which is still
unresolved and uh the Hubble Space
Telescope which uh who knows might be
launched uh next year if we're lucky uh
might answer this question Professor
Hawkin used this very striking metaphor
of the earth borrowing its energy from
itself now in straight banking terms
that means you're going to be overdrawn
and in the end there's going to be a
collapse a big crunch so does Big Bang
get followed inevitably by Big
Crunch no not inevitably it depends on
how much matter there is in the universe
which is a still unsolved issue I should
say that uh the prevailing opinion is
that uh the universe will continue
expanding forever but that in my opinion
is uh is by no means a very secure
conclusion well let me bring in the poet
amongst us here Arthur Clark you know
what TS Elliot said this is the way the
world ends not with a bang but a whimper
when you think of the end of the world
if you think of the end of the world
does it end with a bang or a whimper
well one would like to think that we
will end with a bang of course we'll
never know it is a rather a long way in
the future
uh
some billions tens of billions possibly
even much further in the future and as
Carl said we may have the answers to
these questions in a very few years if
the Hubble Space Telescope gets
successfully into orbit and can peer out
to the boundaries of the universe if we
are sort of living in a little suburb of
the Galaxy can you foresee a time when
we'd need to get out of the the suburb
and colonize somewhere else because of
the gradual curve towards uh the end
well I think the human race if it
survives the next few years will go on
to colonize first the solar system and
then to send uh ships out to the stars
and ultimately perhaps to other galaxies
but if the expansion of the universe is
fast enough we will never be able to
keep up with it now one fascinating
aspect that is raised is the question of
time itself in the book now we all think
that we know what time is it's a
Relentless March forward but for the
purposes of your argument Steven Hawking
you use a mathematical concept that you
call imaginary time which seems to be
able to run backwards as well as
forwards in our theories there are two
kinds of
time there is what is called real
time this is the kind of time that is
measured by a
clock the time that we feel passing the
time in which we grow
older then there is imaginary
time of course imaginary time is an idea
that science fiction writers like Arthur
have used in their
stories but imaginary time is also a
well- defined mathematical concept
it can be thought of as a direction of
time that is at right angles to ordinary
real time in a certain
sense the universe has a beginning in
real time at a big
bang and it may well have an end if it
collapses to a big
crunch but an imaginary time that has no
beginning or
end rather IM imaginary time is closed
in on itself like the surface of the
Earth the surface of the Earth doesn't
have any beginning or
end I know because I have been around
the world and I didn't fall
off individual particles can travel
through imaginary time and arrive back
at an earlier real time
but I don't believe that people will
ever be able to travel back in time like
in the film Back to the Future I'm going
to come first if I may to to you Carl
San because this idea in in Professor
Hawkings book this extraordinary
four-dimensional model of the universe
With No
Boundaries um but finite just like the
Earth this to me is is really stretching
my own capacity for imagination to to
the utmost how do you how would you turn
it into words for Mia
Layman well the first thing I would say
is uh not to feel bad if it's not
immediately intuitively obvious our uh
our ability uh to uh understand things
instantly so-called Common Sense derives
from a certain range of size and speed
and duration uh that are appropriate for
human existence we know about things
from a tenth of a millimeter to a few
kilometers from a fraction of a second
to a to a lifetime uh and so on so when
we are dealing with matters of quantum
physics where uh particles have a size
of 10us 13th CM or in cosmology where uh
where we are talking about uh 10 billion
light years or more it is very
reasonable that our intuition is not
adequate to the task one point I'd like
to make about this is that every human
culture has a set of creation myths uh
but they're in the realm of Mythology or
religion or
folklore uh and they are of course all
mutually
inconsistent the great thing that is
happening in our time is that we are
able through a method which can actually
make some progress towards the real
Universe out there to find out something
about Origins and this is the scientific
method applied to the science of
cosmology so I know that's not a direct
answer to your question but I thought it
was more important to to address the
issue of feeling unhappy because it
wasn't immediately understandable well
yes I find that extremely soothing
actually because it is a kind of it is a
kind of sort of formidable task of
grasping this that makes me want to
retreat into trivial questions like is
this idea of predicting backwards going
to put astrologers out of business
nothing will put astrologers out of
business
alas that certainly added a touch of
lightness to these tremendous issues
that we are discussing Infinity black
holes and imagin time and at this stage
let's um this stage let's relax a little
bit and have a bit of fun with
mathematics at their most abstruse I'm
going to ask Arthur Clark here to do
some doodling with his computer and with
a fascinating exercise with complex
numbers which is called the mandal BR
set now this is named in honor of a
French scientist working for IBM it's a
mathematical equation which lead leads
us towards the infinite in effect it
makes the mathematics of the universe
Visual and incredibly
beautiful this is what we would see if
we had eyes to see it when order meets
chaos this is what's going on in the
universe every day an ordered universe
is breaking down and becoming more
disordered
this is the second law of Thermodynamics
in action what Steven Hawking calls
Murphy's Law now Dr Clark you've been
using your computer back home in Sri
Lanka to explore the Mandel BR set at
incredibly High um
magnifications over to you sir yes well
this strange looking object is the
mandle BR set which actually is
extraordinarily simple in concept it's
defined by an equation of just two terms
z^ + C that's all there is to it yeah
that simple equation z^ s or z^2 plus
C you feed a number into then carry on
over and over again sort of cranking the
number back round and round and then
plot the result on the screen so I won't
go into details but this is the first
appearance of this set and what it does
it divides all possible numbers into two
categories it's really a map or a
boundary or a
fence if you like dividing one class of
numbers from another and you can tell
your computer to go into any spot here
and say recompute that area to a higher
degree of precision and then blow it up
on the screen so you can use the
computer as a microscope and you can
continue that process forever some of
the images are incredibly beautiful and
are going to have a great impact on
artistic design in the next decade or so
um I found what look like black holes
and I like to show them to you so what
I'm going to do now essentially is to
zoom into it increasing the
magnification uh manyfold and if I press
the right button it should happen now
the computer will now give you this
image and I think you'll agree when it
comes up it's a very impressive black
hole and it'll be even more so when I
started interaction
oh yes it is magnificent isn't it oh you
ain't seen nothing
yet I should explain that this
magnification you remember the original
picture which it took about the same
area this time I've magnified it about a
thousand times so the picture you saw
first is now 500 ft across now let's see
if this
works now isn't that
lovely so there is matter streaming into
this black hole well now when I found
this black black hole I started
exploring the neighborhood and I I very
quickly found another indeed now this
that's lovely now this is the second
black hole now it looks just like the
earlier one but this is on a far greater
magnification the original mandle brat
set now is I think about 10 million
miles wide this is enormously bigger
than the first one you saw yet
essentially it's the same kind of
pattern this is black Cole number three
and this
one took me 22 hours of computing the
day before I left Sri Lanka had the
computer running all night and I'm
rather proud of this one because on this
scale that original little picture you
saw is the width of the orbit of
Mars so you you understand that no human
being has ever seen that picture pattern
before simply because of probabilities
and you can explore the mandle BR set by
blowing up bits and pieces of it and you
pretty sure that no one's ever seen that
you're the first person to see it and
each time you're being drawn towards you
being sucked into it mathematical
Infinity into smaller and yes this is
real mathematical Infinity this goes on
forever and ever limited only by the
capacity of your machine and the speed
with which it can do its calculations I
am doing calculations here you may not
be able to see that enormously long
number the 20 digigit numbers or so and
the Machine is multiplying those
together hundreds of times a second now
the thing that fascinates me about this
is that it is infinite in detail you can
go on forever and ever now I would like
to ask Steven this question is the real
Universe also infinite in detail I mean
we know we have molecules atoms
electrons protons subatomic right down
to the quarks so far but does it
continue forever and ever or is there a
limit is there a basement to the real
Universe Professor Hawking
we will discover new structures when
look at a Universe on smaller and
smaller
scales but in the case of the universe
there seems to be a limiting
scale it is called a plank length and
it's about a million billion billion
times smaller than an
inch this means that there is a limit to
how complete a universe can
be it also means that a universe could
be described by a theory that is fairly
simple at least on scales of the plank
length I just hope that we are smart
enough to find
it are we smart enough to find it
Arthur well I wonder because after all
we're still pretty primitive organisms
and the is very old and uh I just don't
know I would like to think so but then
there's a feeling when we found it then
what where do we go from
here I'd like to turn our attention back
now to Professor Steven Hawking do you
think that we could ever hope to use the
old science fiction trick of diving into
a black hole and then traveling to
another part of the cosmos
some recent work indicates that
particles that fall into a black hole
can come out again from another black
hole somewhere else in the
universe at first sight this seems the
ideal method of space
travel just find a black hole and jump
in
it but there are
snacks first there doesn't seem to be
any way to choose where you come
out worse than that your history in real
time would come to a sticky end as you
were torn apart by the gravitational
fields inside a black
hole your history and imaginary time
would continue out of the other black
hole but that might not be much
consolation to someone being made into
spaghetti it would be like traveling on
some lines I could
name so how do you see the the actual
role of Science Fiction is it purely
escapism or do you see it as having a a
a very real purpose in broadening our
our patterns of thinking opening our
minds to the kind of of vast Concepts
which we're discussing today well first
of all there's no re objection to
escapism in the right places in fact CS
Lewis once remarked to me the only
people who don't like who object to
escapism are are
jailers and um we all want to escape
occasionally but science fiction is
often very far from escapism in fact you
might say that science fiction is escape
is escape into reality it's a fiction
which does concern itself with real
issues the origin of and our future in
fact I don't think of I cannot think of
any form of literature which is more
concerned with real issues and
reality well what do you have to say to
that Professor
Hawking I don't believe in stories of
flying saucers another unidentified
flying objects
if time travel were possible we should
have already been visited by people from
the
future I think if we were being visited
by people from another time or another
planet it would be much more obvious and
probably very
unpleasant I don't want to make contact
with another civilization except at a
safe
distance it might be like the North
American Indians making contact with the
white
men I bet they wish they had never sold
Manhattan I bet they did now Carl you
are the world's leading expert in the
search for extraterrestrial intelligence
now Professor Hawking doesn't want to
make contact with them why do you want
to make contact with them well uh first
off I would say we have little choice in
the matter um that is uh
we have already announced or rather I
should say Magnus you fellows have
already announced uh the fact that there
is a low-level technical civilization in
this part of the Galaxy because
television programs uh get out at the
speed of light uh and since any other
civilization who detects those signals
is unlikely to be at or before our state
of technological Advance since we just
invented radio technology so to say they
are much more likely to be in our
technological future and uh the question
as to whether their intentions are
benign or otherwise is of course of
interest but we have nothing to say
about uh about the matter so therefore I
think we might as well hope that it's
benign if they're if they're out there
from my point of view the search for
extraterrestrial life and especially the
search for extraterrestrial intelligence
is one of the key philosophical
scientific and human questions that have
been posed but we are at the very
beginning of searching surely it is
important for us to know the answer one
thing that interests me a great deal is
the way in which the public perception
of uh beings from outer space have have
changed over the years they used to be
the baddies but now there is a there's a
sort of optimistic feeling that any
extraterrestrial life is if not benign
it's at least not as as hostile and
aggressive as one used to fear is this
the drift of your writing as well Arthur
your thinking yes I an optimist and I
believe that any malevolent super
civilization would rapidly
self-destruct as we may be in the
process of doing ourselves so if we do
have contact physical contact with
aliens I think it will be benign my
frivolous mind is much taken very
intelligent beings reasonably near why
have they not visited us well that's a
very good question let's throw it right
across to Arthur CL
there are literally dozens of answers to
this they may have come in the remote
past they may be visiting us every
10,000 years I mean the universe is a
huge place and even there are fleets of
survey ships going all over the cosmos
we shouldn't expect
visitors less than i' say every thousand
years or so they may know all about us
and they may have put a quarantine
around our planet for pretty good
reasons they may be totally uninterested
us it may be so much higher that they
you know we just beneath their beneath
contempt if you like that we don't you
don't can speculate endlessly I think we
should just wait and try and get more
evidence maybe their space Popes are
saying there's no intelligent life on
Earth they may have received our
television programs and decided that
that is the
case may I um attempt a different answer
to uh to Stephen's question please do
Carl um
the uh the first large scale commercial
broadcasting on the Earth was in the
late 1940s uh so that's what 40 years
ago so you must imagine a spherical wave
expanding out from the earth at the
velocity of light which contains all the
jewy programs of the late
1940s since then that expanding
spherical wave containing the uh news of
a developing civilization on Earth has
traveled some 40 light years suppose
that there are no civilizations closer
than 40 light years perhaps they're not
here because they don't know we are
about just yet but uh in time the
message gets to them and uh perhaps they
send a little expedition to look us over
I was delighted when I read that when
space probes went out out first of all
you you put the figure of um a of a man
and a woman on the outside so that any
alien life would recognize what we
looked like and then in a latest prob I
think you put in an LP of Earth sounds
with uh instructions in hand signals on
on how to work the lp how do you think
anybody would have reacted if in fact
alien intelligent had heard this
LP my guess is that it' be something
like uh oh look another artifact from
some extremely primitive civilization
which one is this uh but then some
degree of thanks that uh we were
thoughtful enough to send a message into
the far future which could in no way
benefit us uh certainly a selfless act
and uh perhaps it would be recognized as
a hopeful and optimistic gesture by a an
emerging civilization just setting foot
into the great galactic
Wilderness yes Arthur I know what is
going to happen to your voyagers Carl
they'll be overtaken One Day by a
terrestrial spaceship and brought back
to the
Smithsonian uh it's certainly
technologically possible but I hope they
let it go on its original Mission now
it's very nearly 20 years ago since man
landed on the moon do you think that
we've basically sto trying to get man
any further is there any chance that
another Neil arm strong will set foot on
Mars in our lifetime the United States
and the Soviet Union have managed to
booby trap the planet with about 60,000
nuclear weapons With a Little Help from
Britain France China and Israel uh a
tiny fraction of those weapons is enough
to uh destroy the participating Nations
uh certainly the global civilization
possibly and uh the human species just
maybe uh it is now time
for the United States and the Soviet
Union to demonstrate that they can undo
this Spectre that they can demonstrate
their ability to work together on high
technology for peaceful uh hopeful
purposes that carry us into a benign
21st century and uh that is why I
support the idea of joint us Soviet
cooperation in the exploration of Mars
leading up to a uh an international
manned and by the way womaned uh mission
to the planet Americans and Soviets as
representatives of the human species
other nations I presume would also be
involved and then a glorious whatever it
would be few month period in which Mars
I I have a globe of it right next to me
in which Mars would be explored there
are hundreds for example hundreds of
ancient river valleys uh on Mars Mars is
today bone dry it was once much warmer
much wetter much denser atmosphere much
more earthlike what were those
conditions like why did an earthlike
Planet get converted into this deep Ice
Age condition that uh Mars has has today
and is there life there could there once
have been life are there fossil forms
there are
extraordinary enigmatic geological
features on the planet what is there
nature there is a huge amount of
exploration to do uh and all of it every
step that I've described could be before
the television cameras of the world and
we could all participate in such
exploration is not a danger that that
the human bits that we take with us will
pollute and Destroy something enormously
precious out there simply because we are
so so inquisitive about it Arthur well
as to the question should human beings
go into to the other planets I think the
answer to that is well we could have
stayed in Europe and explored America by
robots it might have been certainly
saved a lot of human lives but of course
we didn't we went there lived in this
new continent now admittedly Mars in
fact none of the planets in the solar
system is anything like as benign as
United States or the other parts of this
planet but one day people are going to
call them home there will be martians
one one day and they'll be our great
grandchildren and they'll think it Earth
probably is a horrible place on which to
live now as to whether we will pollute
these environments yes to some extent of
course colonization always involves the
destruction of what was there first and
I'm quite sure in The Next Century in
fact already it started as a conference
on the pollution of space planned in the
in the United States in the very near
future this is already a serious problem
the near Earth's base but we have to
control it I mean you C you have to cut
down forests on this Earth to make new
cities and on on the moon I'm afraid one
day we may have to abolish much of the
lunar vacu vacuum and on Mars we may
have to change the atmosphere but I do
hope we will leave leave vits of the
universe in a pristine condition but are
we also going to have to change
ourselves on Mars I mean are we going to
have to evolve differently Mars will
change Us in fact this is part of the
evolutionary progress by going out into
new environments by occupying new
biological nites that is the way we
progress and discover the universe and
explore and perhaps fulfill our destiny
do you think that other planets might
have uh the same kind of system in which
there would be a Morality In which there
would be people taking moral attitudes
which may not necessarily be the same as
ours of course well well all societies
must have some moral structure I mean
otherwise you just can't have a society
there must be understand rules you way
you behave to our neighbors and even if
the societies consist of machines they
must have a machine language so they can
agree
to react together so morality in some
way is essential and Universal now
Professor Hawking in the very last
paragraph of your book you say that if
we discover a complete theory of of the
universe then um it should in time be
understandable in Broad principle to
everyone and not just to a few
scientists and when that happens all of
us will be able to start discussing the
why rather than the how and I quote 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 do
you think that God can intervene in the
universe as he wants or is God too Bound
by the laws of
science the question of whether God is
bound by the laws of science is a bit
like the question can God make paper
stone that is so heavy that he cannot
lift
it I don't think it is very useful to
speculate on what God might or might not
be able to
do rather we should examine what he
actually does with the universe we live
in all our observations suggest that it
operates according to well- defined laws
these laws may have been ordained by God
but it seems that he does not intervene
in the universe to break the law at
least not once it had set the universe
going however until recently it was
thought that the laws would necessarily
break down at the beginning of the
universe that would have meant that God
would have had complete fr freed to
choose How the Universe
began in the last few years however we
have realized that the laws of science
May hold even at the beginning of
time in that case God would have had no
Freedom the way the universe began would
be determined by the laws of
science well thank you very much and
Carl San in in your introduction to the
book you comment Ed on this you said
this is also a book about God or perhaps
about the absence of God because Hawking
left nothing for a Creator to do now God
of course means many things to many
people what sort of God basically are we
talking about when when we talk about
reading the mind of
God well I think that's uh that's an
excellent question and uh and I'd be
most interested to uh to hear Steph
Hawkings answer but just just to try to
illuminate the the range of
possibilities consider uh uh two
Alternatives uh one is the uh the notion
popular in the west uh of God as a sort
of outsized elderly white male with a
long white beard sitting in a throne in
the sky and telling the fall of every
Sparrow uh contrast that with uh the
idea of God in the mind of let's say
Spinosa or Einstein which was at least
very close ly the sum total of the laws
of the universe uh now it would be
Madness to deny that there are uh
well-defined physical laws in the
universe and if that's what you mean by
God then there's no question that uh
that God exists but it's a very remote
God a what the french
callant a do nothing King on the other
hand the former model the one who
intervenes daily uh for that there seems
to be as Dr Hawkings said uh no evidence
I think it is wise my my own personal
feeling uh to be uh a little humble on
uh on such matters uh we must recognize
that we are dealing with uh by
definition the most difficult things uh
to know the furthest from Human
Experience and uh perhaps we will be
able to penetrate a little way uh into
these Mysteries I think Professor
Hawking you'd like to come in
here I use God in the same sense that
Einstein did it is really the reason why
the universe is as it is and why the
universe exists at
all can I ask Arthur Clark what he meant
when you're alleged to have said to the
papal Nano I don't believe in God but
I'm extremely interested in him well I
guess I haven't placed my bet yet and um
you know Steven's remarks and Carl's
marks reminded me that this was
said 200 years ago um when
Napoleon I think was talking to llas who
published his theory of the universe and
Napoleon said God isn't in it and llas
replied sir I have no need for that
hypothesis do you think that the church
is in fact beginning to recognize that
it it may have to lose it
priority its Eminence as the sole
Arbiter of of these matters and that
science will be allowed to come in as an
equal partner well the church is
certainly when I the church the Roman
Catholic Church you become very much
more liberal I had the pleasure of
giving a talk in the Vatican myself in
the pontifical Academy of Science quite
recently and met the pope and of course
they're reinstating Galileo and so
things are
moving in fact are they moving backwards
as well as forward Carl Sagan because I
understand it in the earliest days of
civilization then the priests were in
fact what we call the scientists the
ones who could study astronomy and who
could predict eclipses and things do you
see the scientist coming back into an
almost sedotal position like this or am
I overstating
it well I I uh I hope you're overstating
it uh I think the essence of the
scientific method is the willingness to
uh to admit you're wrong the willingness
to abandon ideas that don't work uh and
the essence of religion is not to change
uh anything that supposed truths are
handed down by some revered figure and
then no one is supposed to make any uh
any progress beyond that because all the
truth is thought to be in hand I'm
really talking about setting an agenda
for the future uh my sense is that the
scientific way of of thinking
questioning uh some delicate mix of uh
creative encouragement of new ideas and
the most rigorous and skeptical scrutiny
of new and old ideas uh I think that is
the path to the Future not just for
science but uh for all human
institutions we have to be willing to
challenge because we are in desperate
need of change can I put the same
question to you Arthur Clark then
politicians or priests are setting the
agenda or scientists I'm very fond of
quoting Pandit Nero on this when he once
said
that politics and religion are obsolete
the time has come for Science and
spirituality I hear from the clicking
that Professor Hawking would like to
come
in I don't think that physics tell us
how to behave to our
neighbors ah well physics May determine
who our neighbors are and what on what
planets they live well you said science
should be skeptical of politics don't
you think ought to be a little skeptical
about science too I mean can we trust
you
guys I uh I think you should certainly
be skeptical but uh my view is that
there's no community of people on the
planet more skeptical than science it's
our stock in trade it's the lifeblood of
our
subject science is a self-correcting
subject not like
politics well politics are corrected by
other forces um can I ask one question
of of you all and that is the the
question of creativity which fascinates
me here we have three enormously
creative people with enormously creative
intellects how in fact does it does it
operate do you Arthur Clark do you sort
of find um a problem that you'd like to
work on and then look for a solution to
it I'm not sure what my mechanism of
creation is and I don't think I really
want to know because I'm afraid if I
discovered it I would like the centipede
when it was asked how it walked just
fell distracted in a ditch or a golfer
when he's asked about his swing yes so
you don't think about that um Carl San
there is a serious side to this well
this issue of where creativity comes
from is uh I I share your fascination
with it um I don't think we understand
very much about it I my practice is uh
merely to to respect my unconscious mind
who often is much wiser than than the
conscious part of me and uh and pay
attention to what it says uh uh in fact
I think this is connected with that that
delicate tension at the heart of the
scientific method I talked about before
the unconscious mind proposes a range of
possibility of possibilities and the
conscious mind disposes that is Compares
those ideas with the real world checks
for internal
inconsistencies uh and so on I think the
creative process is a partnership uh
between a conscious and an unconscious
part of our of our minds at least that's
how it seems to
me I'd like to leave the last word on
creativity in fact with Professor Steven
Hawking
just whenever you're ready
sir I am just curious I want to find out
how things work I follow my nose one
thing leads to another and I don't know
what I will find
next now I think I would like to retreat
a little bit into poetry myself because
it's nearly 150 years ago since Matthew
Arnold wrote his Splendid poem the
future but what was before us we know
not and we know not what will succeed
well perhaps if Professor Hawkings
magnificent vision and curiosity is
realized we'll have proved Matthew
Arnold wrong before the 150 years are up
gentlemen to all of you to Professor
Steven Hawking to Dr Arthur C Clark to
you Carl Sean in America our warmest
thanks to all three of you and to all of
you watching good night
[Music]
for