Chapter 1

In the first chapter of A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking discusses the history of our understanding of the universe and how our understanding has been shaped by technology and observation. He notes that many early ideas about the universe, such as the geocentric model proposed by Ptolemy, were based on limited observations and were later disproven. He credits Sir Isaac Newton with starting modern physics with his laws of motion and universal gravitation, and discusses the development of the big bang theory, which suggests that the universe had a beginning. Hawking also talks about the importance of theories and observations in understanding the universe and the search for a theory that can explain everything. He notes that scientists often work on partial theories and that the goal is to find a universal theory that can encompass all of these partial theories.