There is no prescribed route to follow to arrive at a new idea. You have to make the intuitive leap. But the difference is that once you've made that intuitive leap you have to justify it by filling in the intermediate steps.
More Quotes from Stephen Hawking:
The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.Stephen Hawking
God not only plays dice, He also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen.
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I put a lot of effort into writing A Briefer History at a time when I was critically ill with pneumonia because I think that it's important for scientists to explain their work, particularly in cosmology. This now answers many questions once asked of religion.
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Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?
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It often happens that I have an idea, but then I try to fill in the intermediate steps and find they don't work, so I have to give it up.
Stephen Hawking
Not only does God play dice, but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.
Stephen Hawking
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