A different, complementary, more existential side of Hawking comes alive in an interview conducted shortly after the release of A Brief History of Time and found in the out-of-print treasure Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists (public library) — the 1990 collection of interviews by Alan Lightman and Roberta Brawer, exploring “the ways in which personal, philosophical, and social factors enter the scientific process,” which also gave us pioneering astronomer Vera Rubin on women in science, dark matter, and our never-ending quest to know the universe.
When asked how he would design the universe if he could design it any way he wanted, Hawking, beloved for his dry humor, answers
Turning over the question of meaning to Nobel-winning physicist Steven Weinberg’s famous assertion that “the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless,” Hawking offers a laconic yet spirited counterpoint:
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