Like so many scholars before him, the early Hawking regarded the fundamental laws of physics as immutable, timeless truths. “If we do discover a complete theory…we would truly know the mind of God,” he wrote in A Brief History of Time. More than ten years on, however, during our first meeting—and with Linde’s multiverse breathing down our neck—I sensed he felt a crack in this position. Does physics really provide godlike foundations operating at the big bang origin of time? Do we need such foundations?
