Frank J. Tipler

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Frank Jennings Tipler III[1][2] (born February 1, 1947 in Andalusia, Alabama[1]) is a mathematical physicist and a professor in the departments of Mathematics and Physics (joint appointment) at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.[3]

Prof. Tipler is the son of Frank Jennings Tipler, Jr., a lawyer, and Anne Tipler, a homemaker.[1]

Tipler received his Bachelor of Science degree in physics in 1969 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (attending from 1965-1969).[3]

In 1976 Tipler obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park (attending from 1969-1976) in the field of global general relativity (the same rarefied field of Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking) for his proof, using the techniques of Hawking and Penrose, that if a time machine could be created its use would necessarily result in the formation of singularities.[4] Tipler went on to be hired as a postdoctoral researcher by physicists John A. Wheeler, Abraham Taub, Rainer Sachs and Dennis Sciama.[3]

Tipler became Professor of Mathematical Physics in 1981 at Tulane University, where he has taught since.[3]

Academic work

Main article: Omega Point (Tipler)

In his controversial[5] 1994 book The Physics of Immortality, Tipler claims to provide a mechanism for immortality and the resurrection of the dead consistent with the known laws of physics, provided by a computer intelligence he terms the Omega Point and which he identifies with God. The line of argument is that the evolution of intelligent species will enable scientific progress to grow exponentially, eventually enabling control over the universe even on the largest possible scale. Tipler predicts that this process will culminate with an all-powerful intelligence whose computing speed and information storage will grow exponentially at a rate exceeding the collapse of the universe, thus providing infinite "experiential time" which will be used to run computer simulations of all intelligent life that has ever lived in the history of our universe. This virtual reality emulation is what Tipler means by "the resurrection of the dead."

In more recent works, Tipler says that the existence of the Omega Point is required to avoid the violation of the known laws of physics.

According to George Ellis's review of Tipler's book in the journal Nature, Tipler's book on the Omega Point is "a masterpiece of pseudoscience ... the product of a fertile and creative imagination unhampered by the normal constraints of scientific and philosophical discipline,"[6] and Michael Shermer devoted a chapter of Why People Believe Weird Things to enumerating perceived flaws in Tipler's thesis.[7] On the other hand, Oxford physics professor David Deutsch (who pioneered the field of quantum computers by being the first person to formulate an algorithm specific to quantum computation in 1985[8]), confirms that Tipler's basic concept of the physics of an Omega Point is correct. However, while in his 1997 book The Fabric of Reality Deutsch incorporates the concept of Tipler's Omega Point as a central feature of the fourth strand of his "four strands" Theory of Everything,[9] he doesn't therein support Tipler's identification of the Omega Point with God. Although Prof. Deutsch does agree that the society near the Omega Point would have unlimited computational resources available to them (i.e., finite at any given time, with additional resources continuously coming online), and hence would be able to perfectly emulate any environment (including being able to resurrect us, and all possible variations of us) which does not involve a logical contradiction.

His earlier book, 1986's The Anthropic Cosmological Principle with John D. Barrow, reviews the intellectual history of teleology, the large number of physical coincidences which allow sapient life to exist (i.e., the anthropic principle), and then investigates the ultimate fate of the universe. This was the first book to describe the Omega Point Theory.

Prof. Tipler's 2007 book The Physics of Christianity analyzes the Omega Point Theory's pertinence to Christian theology.[10] In the book Tipler identifies the Omega Point as being the Judeo-Christian God, particularly as described by Christian theological tradition. In this book Tipler also analyzes how Jesus Christ could have performed the miracles attributed to him in the New Testament without violating any known laws of physics, even if one were to assume that we currently don't exist on a level of implementation in a computer simulation (in the case that we did, then according to Tipler such miracles would be trivially easy to perform for the society which was running the simulation, even though it would seem amazing from our perspective).

Over the years, Tipler has had fruitful interactions with the theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg.[11]

Tipler's writings on scientific peer review have been cited by William A. Dembski as forming the basis of the process for review in the intelligent design journal Progress in Complexity, Information and Design of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design, where both Tipler and Dembski serve as fellows.

Books

  • Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Christianity (New York: Doubleday, 2007), ISBN 0385514247. Chapter I and excerpt from Chapter II. Chapter I also available here.
  • Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead (New York: Doubleday, 1994), ISBN 0198519494. 56-page excerpt available here.
  • John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, Foreword by John A. Wheeler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), ISBN 0198519494. Excerpt from Chapter 1.

Articles by Tipler

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Terrie M. Rooney (editor), Contemporary Authors, Vol. 157 (Farmington Hills, Michigan: Thomson Gale, 1997), ISBN 0787611832, pg. 407.
  2. ^ Stephen Webb, If the Universe is Teeming with Aliens ... Where is Everybody?: Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life (New York: Springer, 2002), ISBN 0387955011, pg. 245.
  3. ^ a b c d "Biography," Frank J. Tipler's Tulane University website.
  4. ^ Frank Jennings Tipler, Causality Violation in General Relativity, Ph.D. thesis at the University of Maryland, College Park (1976). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Vol. 37-06, Section B, pg. 2923. Also available as Dissertation 76-29,018 from Xerox University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, MI.
  5. ^ New Scientist, 4 February 1995, p. 41; Nature 371 [8 September 1994]: 115; Science 267 [17 February 1995]: 1042-43
  6. ^ Ellis, George (1994). "Review of The Physics of Immortality" (PDF). Nature. 37 (6493): 115.
  7. ^ Shermer, Michael (1997). Why People Believe Weird Things. W.H. Freeman and Company. ISBN 0-7167-3090-1.
  8. ^ D. Deutsch, "Quantum theory, the Church-Turing principle and the universal quantum computer," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London; Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Vol. 400, No. 1818 (July 1985), pp. 97-117. Also available here. See also here.
  9. ^ David Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes—and Its Implications (London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1997), ISBN 0713990619. Extracts from Chapter 14: "The Ends of the Universe," with additional comments by Frank J. Tipler; also available here and here.
  10. ^ Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Christianity (New York: Doubleday, 2007), ISBN 0385514247. Chapter I and excerpt from Chapter II. Chapter I also available here.
  11. ^ See Science and Theology News, 1 June 2001, wherein Pannenberg refers to Tipler as "my friend" and expresses general admiration of Tipler's "daring proposition concerning the future of the universe as a beginning of the dialogue between scientists and theologians about the future of the universe."

External links

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