Frank Tipler is a crackpot. At one point in his life, he did very good technical work in general relativity; he was the first to prove theorems that closed timelike curves could not be constructed in local regions of spacetime without either violating the weak energy condition or creating a singularity. But alas, since then he has pretty much gone off the deep end, and more recently has become known for arguments for Christianity based on fundamental physics. If you closely at those arguments (h/t wolfgang), you find things like this:
If life is to guide the entire universe, it must be co-extensive with the entire universe. We can say that life must have become OMNIPRESENT in the universe by the end of time. But the very act of guiding the universe to eliminate event horizons – an infinite number of nudges – causes the entropy and hence the complexity of the universe to increase without limit. Therefore, if life is to continue guiding the universe – which it must, if the laws of physics are to remain consistent – then the knowledge of the universe possessed by life must also increase without limit, becoming both perfect and infinite at the final singularity. Life must become OMNISCIENT at the final singularity. The collapse of the universe will have provided available energy, which goes to infinity as the final singularity is approached, and this available energy will have become entirely under life’s control. The rate of use of this available energy – power – will diverge to infinity as the final singularity is approached. In other words, life at the final singularity will have become OMNIPOTENT. The final singularity is not in time but outside of time. On the boundary of space and time, as described in detail by Hawking and Ellis [6]. So we can say that the final singularity – the Omega Point – is TRANSCENDANT to space, time and matter.
All of the signs of classic crackpottery are present; the vague and misplaced appeal to technical terminology, the spelling mistakes and capital letters, the random use of “must” and “therefore” when no actual argument has been given. Two paragraphs later, we get:
Science is not restricted merely to describing only what happens inside the material universe, any more than science is restricted to describing events below the orbit of the Moon, as claimed by the opponents of Galileo. Like Galileo, I am convinced that the only scientific approach is to assume that the laws of terrestrial physics hold everywhere and without exception – unless and until an experiment shows that these laws have a limited range of application.
Compares self with Galileo! 40 points! There is really no indication that the person who wrote this was once writing perfectly sensible scientific papers.
Perhaps you will not be surprised to find that Tipler has now jumped into global-warming denialism. In just a few short paragraphs, we are treated to the following gems of insight (helpfully paraphrased):
People say that anthropogenic global warming is now firmly established, but that’s what they said about Ptolemaic astronomy! Therefore, I am like Copernicus.
A scientific theory is only truly scientific if it makes predictions “that the average person can check for himself.” (Not making this up.)
You know what causes global warming? Sunspots!
Sure, you can see data published that makes it look like the globe actually is warming. But that data is probably just fabricated. It snowed here last week!
If the government stopped funding science entirely, we wouldn’t have these problems.
You know who I remind myself of? Galileo.
Stillman Drake, the world’s leading Galileo scholar, demonstrates in his book “Galileo: A Very Short Introduction” (Oxford University Press, 2001) that it was not theologians, but rather his fellow physicists (then called “natural philosophers”), who manipulated the Inquisition into trying and convicting Galileo. The “out-of-the-mainsteam” Galileo had the gall to prove the consensus view, the Aristotlean theory, wrong by devising simple experiments that anyone could do. Galileo’s fellow scientists first tried to refute him by argument from authority. They failed. Then these “scientists” tried calling Galileo names, but this made no impression on the average person, who could see with his own eyes that Galileo was right. Finally, Galileo’s fellow “scientists” called in the Inquisition to silence him.
One could go on, but what’s the point? Well, perhaps there are two points worth making.
First, Frank Tipler is probably very “intelligent” by any of the standard measures of IQ and so forth. In science, we tend to valorize (to the point of fetishizing) a certain kind of ability to abstractly manipulate symbols and concepts — related to, although not exactly the same as, the cult of genius. (It’s not just being smart that is valorized, but a certain kind of smart.) The truth is, such an ability is great, but tends to be completely uncorrelated with other useful qualities like intellectual honesty and good judgment. People don’t become crackpots because they’re stupid; they become crackpots because they turn their smarts to crazy purposes.
Second, the superficially disconnected forms of crackpottery that lead on the one hand to proving Christianity using general relativity, and on the other to denying global warming, clearly emerge from a common source. The technique is to first decide what one wants to be true, and then come up with arguments that support it. This is a technique that can be used by anybody, for any purpose, and it’s why appeals to authority aren’t to be trusted, no matter how “intelligent” that authority seems to be.
Tipler isn’t completely crazy to want “average people” to be able to check claims for themselves. He’s mostly crazy, as by that standard we wouldn’t have much reason to believe in either general relativity or the Standard Model of particle physics, since the experimental tests relevant to those theories are pretty much out of reach for the average person. But the average person should be acquainted with the broad outlines of the scientific method and empirical reasoning, at least enough so that they try to separate crackpots from respectable scientists. Because nobody ever chooses to describe themselves as a crackpot. If you ask them, they’ll always explain that they are on the side of Galileo; and if you don’t agree, you’re no better than the Inquisition.
As a member of the scientific establishment, your opinion could hardly be trusted, you are too invested in preserving the status quo.
(sorry, thought you missed one element of the genre).
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I so wish I had access to a collection of crackpot theories and papers. They would make for some great source material for writing very cheesy sci-fi stories.
I have little use for the term ‘crackpot’. The great mathematician Cantor would have satisfied nearly all of the qualifications, lacking only the matter of capitalization/typography.
Anyway, I prefer the word ‘kook’.
Whatever you choose to call them, there’s still a fundamental difference between some crazy that claims that RHIC shot down TWA 800, and when someone like Brian Josephson starts hunting for ghosts. The later is far more appalling, and potentially far more dangerous.
Under the circumstances, wouldn’t a self-comparison to Sir Isaac Newton be more appropriate than Galileo? 😉
I still have Tipler’s undergraduate physics text on my library shelves somewhere. I seem to recall that in the later chapters he had (what I thought at the time) were some pretty thought provoking things to say about the theoretical possibilities to extra-terrestrial life or something like that. I’m I wrong about this?
Perhaps it was just good dorm-room conversation fodder which doesn’t hold up to a more mature reading. I’ll have to pull the book out again and look.
BTW, thanks for the link to the Crackpot Index. I always think about that and can’t remember what it’s called and how to find it.
Tony, they are not hard to find. These guys are desperate. Just Google for “physics forums” and start reading threads. You’ll find many examples of people expounding their intricate crackpot ideas.
Standard measures of IQ draw heavily on pattern recognition abilities, so its not surprising when high-IQ types go off about patterns that aren’t actually there when you look closely.
We really need good pattern-detectors in science — they have the ability to move entire fields when they catch on to important things that others have missed. Its just a mistake to assume that all aspects of scientific competence depend equally on this particular kind of ability.
Isaac Newton, I believe, spent a lot of the latter part of his intellectual life as a crackpot — pursuing theories in alchemy and astrology.
Linus Pauling went wandering off into Vitamin C, increasingly losing touch with the world of science even though he was otherwise highly functional.
I wonder if there’s a peculiar variety of dementia that affects certain Minds … where the same traits that once produced creative insights now lead into dark and hopeless tangles.
@stand:
The only undergraduate physics book I know of was written by *Paul* Tipler, not the Frank Tipler discussed here…
“Isaac Newton, I believe, spent a lot of the latter part of his intellectual life as a crackpot — pursuing theories in alchemy and astrology.”
I ‘m not sure that either alchemy or astrology had yet been relegated to the crackpot fringe in Newton’s day.
They were both baseless, but respectable people still studied them.
Yes, Tipler. I actually read his “Physics of Immortality” book a long time ago. Although sad, highly speculative and a bit “crackpotish”, as I recall, he did have at least a couple of falsifiable ideas. If memory serves, one was a prediction for the mass of the Higg’s boson (although I think his tie in to the rest of his thesis was, well, loose would be a kind way to put it) and, as evidenced here, an eventually collapsing universe (although again, as I recall, I don’t think he ever made a convincing case that a collapsing universe would be verification of his speculations. In fact, I recall they were simple assertions without justification much like those pointed out in this post.). Sad to see that he seems to have slipped further into crackpottery.
Although I would have to say that in undergraduate school, I too was like Galileo. For some time I had a beard.
Just so, Bjoern! Thanks for the correction.
I went to a Lutheran liberal arts college. Some profs there adore this guy.(for this later work, unfortunately)
I like to think of myself as more of a Benvenuto Cellini type.
Hopefully this will also finally discredit Tipler’s incomplete views (I am trying to be polite here) on the non-existence of ETI due to his thinking that at least some of them would make Von Neumann machines which should reproduce and populate the galaxy in relatively short order. The “fact” that no alien VN machines have visited Earth is his proof that ETI do not exist.
Just a few logic holes you could drive a starship through in that one.
As for Tipler’s Omega Point idea, note that one of the things he says everyone will get to do when we are all merged into One is that everyone can have sex with everyone they’ve ever wanted to do. Projecting one’s sexual fantasies into their so-called scientific theory is not very scientific.
The guy has gone down a road he will probably never be able to come back from. Even worse, how many will he take with him?
It’s funny how anyone even remotely tied to Christianity is immediately dismissed and labeled crackpot.
If both Christianity and Science have holes and gaps that they believe they could fill for each other…a dialog should be developed. If anything, communication will do well to inform the specific stances of each party. More communication is key, not less…and less name calling based on ideological differences. 😛
Meanwhile, I think it’s funny how a particular religious crackpot is effortlessly equated with “anyone even remotely tied to Christianity.”
It’s a world full of funny.
Not that it needs to be further falsified, but doesn’t Tipler’s model of a collapsing universe with ever increasing information content violate the holographic principle?
e.
You are correct, Sean. He’s lost it.
teknologist,
What makes Tipler a crackpot isn’t that he’s a Christian, it’s that he apparently thinks you can prove Christianity correct using general relativity. Which is, to put it bluntly, nuts.
Everyone knows that God is a Presbyterian.
The whole point of Christianity is that of having FAITH in an unseen God. Faith doesn’t exist in the realms of absolutes. In the absence of doubt, you also have the absence of faith. If we believe in a God that we could completely define and understand, wouldn’t that diminish the supernatural aura of said God? I don’t believe he is wrong for wanting to prove there is a God, people have been looking to prove or disprove the existence of God since the beginning of humanity. I, for one, believe that it takes just as much faith to believe in God, as it does to believe God doesn’t exist. The evidence isn’t conclusive either way
Wow, that’s totally nuts.
Ah, Cosmic Variance. And Sean. And his teeth-grindingly monotonous musings on religion.
Now I remember why I avoid this blog like the plague…