Frank J. Tipler
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Frank J. Tipler is a professor of mathematical physics at Tulane University, New Orleans, physicist, theologian and cornucopian philosopher.
(Not to be confused with the physicist Paul A. Tipler (emeritus at the Oakland University), author of a very popular undergraduate textbook on general physics.)
In his controversial book The Physics of Immortality, Tipler claims to prove the existence of life after death, provided by an artificial intelligence he calls 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 a nearly all-powerful artificial intelligence whose computing speed and information storage will grow exponentially at a rate exceeding the collapse of the Universe, thus providing infinite "virtual 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 exercise is what Tipler means by "the resurrection of the dead."
Tipler claims to derive this end state and its inevitability from general principles. However, a large majority of his colleagues in physics consider his logic to be flawed and do not take his theory seriously. Tipler's so-called Omega Point Theory makes physical assumptions, in particular that the universe will end in a final singularity (the Big Crunch), and that no other (nonfinal) singularities exist in the universe. These assumptions are by no means accepted. George Ellis's review of Tipler's book in the journal Nature is typical of the reception Tipler received in the academic community: according to Ellis, 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." Other scientists, such as Oxford physicist David Deutsch, find Tipler's arguments compelling. In his 1997 book, The Fabric of Reality, Deutsch incorporates Tipler's Omega Point Theory as a central feature of his "Four Strands" Theory of Everything.
His earlier book, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (with John D. Barrow), reviews the intellectual history of teleology, the large number coincidences of Eddington and P. A. M. Dirac, then sets out Tipler's thinking as of the early 1980s on the ultimate fate of the universe.
Over the years, Tipler has had fruitful interactions with the theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg.
Books
- 1986. The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (with John D. Barrow). Oxford Uni. Press. ISBN 0192821474
- 1994. The Physics of Immortality. Doubleday. ISBN 0385467990
See also
External links
- Frank Tipler's personal website.
- Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy? at the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design, i.e., Intelligent design.