In 2012 Stephen Hawking abandoned belief in the ability of science to describe reality, in favour of a model-dependent account of truth. We tend to think it is the job of scientists to discover truths about the universe. Yet, Hawking rendered this an impossible task and came to argue that truth is an illusion. For Hawking, in the end, there was no idea of reality that made any sense. All we have are our models. Written by Paul Hoyningen-Huene.

“Model-dependent realism” is a term coined by physicist Stephen Hawking in his 2010 book The Grand Design: New Answers to the Ultimate Questions of Life (co-authored with Leonard Mlodinow). The term denominates Hawking’s overall view of physics. Hawking had already articulated the main idea of this position in his 1996 debate with Roger Penrose (in The Nature of Space and Time, Chapter 7), but here he develops the idea more fully. Before explaining Hawking’s position, we should understand to which problem, situation or question it serves as a response.

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Does human knowledge reach the truth about nature, “the true, undistorted picture of reality” (p. 53 in his book), or does it not?

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The book’s subtitle promises a new answer to one of those “ultimate questions of life,” roughly: how far does human knowledge extend? This question can be understood in various ways, and the specific meaning of the question Hawking addresses is, does human knowledge reach the truth about nature, “the true, undistorted picture of reality” (p. 53 in his book), or does it not? This is indeed a very old philosophical question, and the first important distinction to be drawn is that between those who affirm that such knowledge is humanly reachable, and those who deny that possibility. This disagreement is far from trivial because it concerns, in fact, our understanding of what constitutes reality. To put this main question in slightly different terms: is reality exclusively constituted by mind-independent elements or are there, in addition, mind-dependent ingredients in reality? Note that our everyday understanding of reality clearly belongs to the first alternative: (physical) reality is, as is often stressed, mind independent. This understanding of reality is so deeply ingrained that the absence of mind-dependent elements in reality may appear to be a definitional truth. The label that typically denotes such a position in philosophy is “realism”, qualified sometimes additionally by terms like “scientific,” “structural,” or “entity,” hinting at some specific additional features in the respective positions.

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