Typically, people reporting on scientific works simplify things to the point of absurdity. I suspect that that is what has occurred with this:
“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing,” they write. “Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.”
This is meaningless circular reasoning. I hope Hawkings and his friend were trying to assert something deeper.
Hawking, like some other scientists before him, has left his discipline and is wandering off into metaphysics. If the summary is accurate, he isn’t very good. Nevertheless, his metaphysical views will be taken as profound because they issue from someone the media adores.
Perhaps the title of the book ought to have been “Hawking Discovers Aristotle”.
Aristotle once asserted that this was true of life... that eels grew from horsehairs that fell into water, and so forth. I'm surprised that we've come so far only to return to the same old drivel.