Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion Obsolete? - Technology

"I think at some point you need to provoke people. Science is meant to make people uncomfortable." It is hard to know how our future descendants will regard the little sliver of history that we live in. It is hard to know what events will seem important to them, what the narrative of now will look like to the twenty-fifth century mind. In January, Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist and Director of the Origins Institute at Arizona State University, published A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing, a book that, as its title suggests, purports to explain how something---and not just any something, but the entire universe---could have emerged from nothing, the kind of nothing implicated by quantum field theory. By early spring, media coverage of "A Universe From Nothing" seemed to have run its course, but then on March 23rd the New York Times ran a blistering review of the book, written by David Albert, a philosopher of physics from Columbia University.

Philosophy v science: which can answer the big questions of life? | Science | The Observer Julian Baggini No one who has understood even a fraction of what science has told us about the universe can fail to be in awe of both the cosmos and of science. When physics is compared with the humanities and social sciences, it is easy for the scientists to feel smug and the rest of us to feel somewhat envious. Philosophers in particular can suffer from lab-coat envy. However – and I'm sure you could see a "but" coming – I do wonder whether science hasn't suffered from a little mission creep of late. I don't feel proprietorial about the problems of philosophy. Some of the things you have said and written suggest that you share some of science's imperialist ambitions. Lawrence Krauss Thanks for the kind words about science and your generous attitude. Getting to your question of morality, for example, science provides the basis for moral decisions, which are sensible only if they are based on reason, which is itself based on empirical evidence. Take homosexuality, for example.

A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing (9781451624458): Lawrence M. Krauss, Richard Dawkins