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Frank J. Tipler
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Frank Jennings Tipler III (born February 1, 1947 in Andalusia, Alabama) is a mathematical physicist and a professor in the departments of Mathematics and Physics (joint appointment) at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Life
Prof. Tipler is the son of Frank Jennings Tipler, Jr., a lawyer, and Anne Tipler, a homemaker.
Tipler received his Bachelor of Science degree in physics in 1969 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (attending from 1965-1969). 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 for his proof, using the techniques of Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, that if a time machine could be created its use would necessarily result in the formation of singularities.
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Encyclopedia
Frank Jennings Tipler III (born February 1, 1947 in Andalusia, Alabama) is a mathematical physicist and a professor in the departments of Mathematics and Physics (joint appointment) at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Life
Prof. Tipler is the son of Frank Jennings Tipler, Jr., a lawyer, and Anne Tipler, a homemaker.
Tipler received his Bachelor of Science degree in physics in 1969 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (attending from 1965-1969). 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 for his proof, using the techniques of Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, that if a time machine could be created its use would necessarily result in the formation of singularities. Tipler went on to be hired as a postdoctoral researcher by physicists John A. Wheeler, Abraham Taub, Rainer Sachs and Dennis Sciama.
Tipler became Professor of Mathematical Physics in 1981 at Tulane University, where he has taught since.
Academic work
The Omega Point
In his controversial 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," and Michael Shermer devoted a chapter of Why People Believe Weird Things to enumerating perceived flaws in Tipler's thesis. 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), endorses the physics of Tipler's Omega Point Theory as being correct. However, while in his 1997 book The Fabric of Reality Deutsch incorporates Tipler's Omega Point Theory as a central feature of the fourth strand of his "four strands" concept of fundamental reality, 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 diverging to infinity), and hence would be able to perfectly emulate any environment which does not involve a logical contradiction (e.g., such as rendering a circle that's at the same time also a triangle), which would allow the society near the Omega Point to be able to resurrect us, and all possible variations of us.
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. 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.
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.
The quantum gravity Theory of Everything
In his 2005 paper in the journal Reports on Progress in Physics, Prof. Tipler maintains that the correct quantum gravity theory has existed since 1962, first discovered by Richard Feynman in that year, and independently discovered by Steven Weinberg and Bryce DeWitt, among others. But, according to Tipler, because these physicists were looking for equations with a finite number of terms (i.e., derivatives no higher than second order), they abandoned this qualitatively unique quantum gravity theory since in order for it to be consistent it requires an arbitrarily higher number of terms. "They also did not realize that the correct quantum gravity theory is consistent only if a certain set of boundary conditions are imposed ...," writes Tipler (which includes the initial Big Bang, and the final Omega Point, cosmological singularities). Tipler says that the equations for this theory of quantum gravity are term-by-term finite, but the same mechanism that forces each term in the series to be finite also forces the entire series to be infinite (i.e., infinities that would otherwise occur in spacetime, consequently destabilizing it, are transferred to the cosmological singularities, thereby preventing the universe from immediately collapsing into nonexistence). Tipler writes that "It is a fundamental mathematical fact that this [infinite series] is the best that we can do. ... This is somewhat analogous to Liouville's theorem in complex analysis, which says that all analytic functions other than constants have singularities either a finite distance from the origin of coordinates or at infinity."
In the same aforestated journal article, Prof. Tipler combines the above theory of quantum gravity with an extended Standard Model in order to form what he maintains is the correct Theory of Everything (TOE) describing and unifying all the forces in physics.
Out of 50 articles, Prof. Tipler's said paper was selected as one of 12 for the "Highlights of 2005" accolade as "the very best articles published in Reports on Progress in Physics in 2005 [Vol. 68]. Articles were selected by the Editorial Board for their outstanding reviews of the field. They all received the highest praise from our international referees and a high number of downloads from the journal Website." Reports on Progress in Physics is the leading journal of the Institute of Physics (based on its impact factor, according to Journal Citation Reports), Britain's main professional body for physicists.
Writings
Books
- Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Christianity (New York: Doubleday, 2007), ISBN 0385514247. Chapter I also available
- 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
- John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, Foreword by John A. Wheeler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), ISBN 0198519494.
Selected Articles
- Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) University of Nottingham
- arXiv.org xxx.lanl.gov
- Theophysics.
- F. J. Tipler, Observatory, Vol. 125 (June 2005), pp. 168-174. Also available
- F. J. Tipler, Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 (April 2005), pp. 897-964. See also Also released as arXiv:0704.3276, April 24, 2007.
- Frank Tipler, Gamma, Vol. 10, No. 2 (April 2003), pp. 14-23; note that the foregoing version corrects character formatting errors of the versions available and For the version in Dutch, see Gamma, Jrg. 10, Nr. 2 (April 2003), pp. 14-23; also available
- Frank J. Tipler, International Journal of Astrobiology, Vol. 2, Issue 2 (April 2003), pp. 141-148; also available See also Also at
- Frank J. Tipler, Social Science Research Network (SSRN), January 15, 2007.
- Frank J. Tipler, Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design (PCID), Vols. 2.1 and 2.2 (January-June 2003). See also and Also published as Chapter 7 in edited by William A. Dembski, Foreword by John Wilson (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2004), ISBN 1932236309.
See also
External links
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- A website with information on Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point Theory.
- Video of a lecture by Prof. Frank J. Tipler on the Omega Point Theory, Terasem Movement, July 20, 2005: and Microsoft PowerPoint Also available
- Jason Rennie (interviewer), The Sci Phi Show, posted May 27, 2007. Also available and Prof. Tipler discusses the Omega Point Theory and his book The Physics of Christianity.
- Closer to Truth (Public Broadcasting Service [PBS]) shows featuring Prof. Tipler, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn:
- show 105, first aired June 2000. RealMedia
- show 213, first aired December 2000. RealMedia
- show 214, first aired December 2000. RealMedia
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