Alamo-Girl, I have a number of questions. Starting with the above quote from Hawking: Do these statements appear as tautological to you as they do to me? What is that "therefore" if not the link between an untested premise, an assertion, and a conclusion based on it, with no evidence or other information given? One might say the conclusion is stated in the premise, period. There is no light shed on the origin of dynamical laws, though certainly they do appear to function "intrinsically" in the universe. They "just are." (Ask no questions about this.)
He goes on: "Although the laws of science seemed to predict the universe has a beginning, they also seemed to predict that they could not determine how the universe would have begun. This was very unsatisfactory." For Aristotle, the question never came up: the universe just always was; there was no "beginning." But given that the Big Bang theory -- which definitely sets a beginning -- seems pretty solid, it has to come up for Hawking. And to deal with a beginning is to deal with time. So he deals with the issue by postulating "imaginary time," so that we can have a beginning of the universe and its "intrinsic laws" without recourse to an extra-cosmic Prime Mover. He goes on:
"...if one knows the state of the universe in imaginary time, one can calculate the state of the universe in real time."
Yes; but -- how does one calculate the state of the universe in imaginary time? Continuing:
"One would still expect some sort of Big Bang singularity in real time. So real time would still have a beginning. But one wouldn't have to appeal to something outside the universe, to determine how the universe began. Instead, the way the universe started out at the Big Bang would be determined by the state of the universe in imaginary time. Thus, the universe would be a completely self-contained system. It would not be determined by anything outside the physical universe, that we observe." [Heaven forfend!]
But how can the universe be so dynamical, if it is thus so relentlessly "self-contained" -- a completely closed system of what boils down to inexorable self-reference, a kind of cosmic solipsism? This type of reasoning smacks of being yet another application of Hegel's "dialectical science," which was never about science, but only about "myth-making."
By what principle can Hawking access "imaginary time?" Does "imaginary time" match up with "imaginary space," and even "imaginary beings?" Is he going to rely on something like that funny little mathematical crittur, i, by which we ensure that we can do square roots of negative numbers -- a purpose-built operational construct, though clearly a useful one? Is physical theory detaching from the world of sensible (and measurable!) objects altogether these days?
Hawking seems to be quite an idealist. Which is a tad odd in a physicist, given the premises of science. I'll take Platonic realism any day....
Thanks for letting me ramble on here. The analogy to the biological materialist's quest of an explanation of the origin of Life by purely intracosmic means seems paralleled by Hawking with respect to the physical universe itself. Darwin took his intimate knowledge of animal husbandry and extrapolated abiogenesis from it. Looks like Hawking is doing something similar in his explanation of a universal beginning in imaginary time....
With regard to the other questions you raise, IMHO, Hawking evidences an “end justifies the means” motive. He cannot entertain the possibility of an external cause and thus tortures the Big Bang with imaginary time to avoid the meaning. He reveals the motive here: