In this context, it is the title of this book that raises the most fundamental questions. Hawking takes it from Hamlet – “I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself the king of infinite space…”
“Hamlet may have meant,” comments Hawking, “that although we human beings are very limited physically, our minds are free to explore the whole universe, and to boldly go where even Star Trek fears to tred – bad dreams permitting.”
At one level, this poignantly evokes the condition of the man himself – wheelchair bound with a body wrecked by motor neuron disease and yet supporting a mind still able to roam the stars. But the reading of the quote is plainly wrong. Hamlet adds, as Hawking acknowledges without comment, “were it not that I have bad dreams.” The qualification – as clear a sign of genius as anything in Shakespeare – changes everything. Hamlet’s bad dreams reveal that, in the nutshell, the space of which he is king is an illusion and a petty one at that.
source: http://bryanappleyard.com/stephen-hawkings-universe-in-a-nutshell/
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