The Grand Design

New York: Bantam. Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket. 2010. First Edition; Third Printing. Hardcover. 0553805371 . A near-fine volume in a near-fine DJ, dustjacket in Mylar, unclipped. ; 6.27 X 0.81 X 9.29 inches; 198 pages; "In The Grand Design, they explain that according to quantum theory, the cosmos does not have just a single existence or history, but rather that every possible history of the universe exists simultaneously. When applied to the universe as a whole, this idea calls into question the very notion of cause and effect. But the “top-down” approach to cosmology that Hawking and Mlodinow describe would say that the fact that the past takes no definite form means that we create history by observing it, rather than that history creates us. The authors further explain that we ourselves are the product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe, and show how quantum theory predicts the “multiverse”—the idea that ours is just one of many universes that appeared spontaneously out of nothing, each with different laws of nature." .