Frank J. Tipler

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Frank Jennings Tipler III (born February 1, 1947 in Andalusia , Alabama , USA ) is an American physicist .

Life

Frank J. Tipler, son of the lawyer Frank Jennings Tipler Jr., studied physics and mathematics a . a. at Oxford University , the University of Texas at Austin, the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics in Munich and the Universities of Bern and Vienna . Since 1987 he has been professor of mathematical physics at Tulane University in New Orleans specializing in cosmology , general relativity , elementary particle physics and complexity theory .

Tipler is a Fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design , which is part of the intelligent design movement generally classified as neo-creationist , and author of the popular and sometimes controversial books The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (with John D. Barrow ), The Physics of Immortality and The Physics of Christianity .

One should not confuse Frank Tipler with Paul A. Tipler , a professor emeritus who has written a physics book for students.

Theses from The Physics of Immortality

As a representative of the strong AI and the anthropic principle , Tipler believes in a final goal of historical change. The fine structure constant is a strong reference to the human-oriented creation of the cosmos. He sees progress integrated into a teleological concept and thus a limitless future for intelligent life and human culture . In his thinking he appeals less to spiritual science than to purely physical arguments. His philosophical and religious stance can be described as a utopian form of pantheism . He sees himself as a deist from a scientific perspective.

Simultaneously with the computer scientist Hans Moravec and the philosopher Robert Nozick , the extreme reductionist developed a theory about the resurrection mechanism and in 1994 published the popular science bestseller The Physics of Immortality - Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead , in which the thesis of the ontological provability of existence of a future God is represented.

At the end of the universe everything that exists virtually or materially accumulates in the Omega point and forms the deity in this infinite moment for the future in their experiential time , because the information is perfect there . In other words: through infinite information the perfect God arises in eternity . He sees the Holy Spirit in the universal wave function - which, according to the Copenhagen interpretation, contains all information about the universe . There is no place for a Son of God if one does not want to consider the development of life and especially of humanity in evolution as such.

The technological prerequisites necessary for this development are presented in a speculative vision and justified in a detailed scientific appendix using mathematical formulas. The basic statement is that all previous existence, all previous life in the distant future will be reprogrammed or newly created in gigantic computer programs encompassing the cosmos. The prerequisite for this is that the information available in the universe, regardless of its size, is ultimately finite and mankind is able to spread through space travel throughout the universe in order to install the corresponding amount of information.

Since human, carbon-based life has no chance of survival in the distant future, the carriers of future human culture will be nanotechnological Von Neumann probes , which Richard Feynman postulated as a concept in his famous lecture There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom in 1959.

Tipler assumes the theology of physics as a branch, and tries to show that his Omega Point - theory with the end-time ideas or the eschatology of world religions coincide.

criticism

In the professional world, Tipler's representations meet with some fierce criticism. Above all, it is criticized that his scenario is based on a multitude of unrealistic or unverifiable assumptions (for example the question of whether the amount of information in the universe is finite or infinite), each of which is so highly speculative that one relegates them individually to the realm of the imagination must. In addition, the teleological and ideological / religious character is criticized as unscientific.

Tipler receives some support for the physical part of his scenarios from David Deutsch , who, however, rejects the religious aspect of Tipler's representations. Comments from colleagues on Tipler and his theses range from "A masterpiece of pseudoscience " ( George FR Ellis in a review in the journal Nature ) to "My first reaction on reading the ideas behind this book in preprint form, was that Frank Tipler had gone mad" (Chris Clarke in a review in the specialist journal Physics Today ) on "My impression after reading the book is a little different: the draft for this book was created in the midst of happy physicists at a late hour" (Gebhard Grübl, Prof. at the Institute for Theoretical Physics the University of Innsbruck). Also from the theological side, e.g. B. Hans-Dieter Mutschler criticizes his theses as crossing the boundaries of natural science.

Theses and Critique of The Physics of Christianity

In this book, too, Tipler explains the cosmological singularity , i.e. the origin of everything outside of space and time, as the Judeo-Christian God . While in the physics of immortality he still describes himself as a Deist who expressly rejects the existence of a Son of God in the biblical sense, Tipler here turns into a believer in Christ who does not contradict miracles such as the virgin birth , the resurrection and the incarnation Denotes laws of science and proposes physical experiments to prove this. Lawrence Krauss described the book in a review as a collection of half-truths and exaggerations as well as uncritical and unfounded; it is far more dangerous than nonsense, because the high scientific reputation of an intelligent professional scientist falsely conveys the convincing illusion that Tipler's theses are implied by physics and that scientific approximation is valid in every context.

Fonts

literature

  • Linus Hauser : Critique of the Neomythischen Vernunft Vol. 3. The fictions of science on the way into the 21st century. Paderborn 2016. pp. 251–262.

See also

Web links

English:

German:

swell

  1. ↑ B. Forrest, PRGross, Creationism's Trojan Horse, The Wedge of Intelligent Design , Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-19-515742-7
  2. ↑ Peter C. Hägele, Ulm University: The cosmological anthropic principle - the strange fine-tuning of the natural constants , accessed on January 19, 2014.
  3. ↑ Gebhard Grübl, University of Innsbruck: About Frank J. Tipler's "Physics of Immortality" , accessed on January 19, 2014.
  4. ^ New Scientist: The Physics of Christianity by Frank Tipler
personal data
SURNAME Tipler, Frank J.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tipler, Frank Jennings III
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American mathematician, physicist, philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH February 1, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Andalusia , Alabama