Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 15:16:49 +0200
From: "Gatherer, D. (Derek)" <D.Gatherer@organon.nhe.akzonobel.nl>
Subject: Re: Ontology (was Meme Conference)
To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Mario:
No, I don't have an idea myself. But some physician/mathematician, Frank
Tipler
has written a book about a future with self replicating space travelling
machines
which gradually populate the universe (whereafter so much knowledge is
gathered
that the past can be reconstructed in detail so that we are resurrected!!
Haha.
Who said that I was speculative?)
Derek:
I remember that book. It was called 'The Cosmological Anthropic Principle'
and was co-authored with John Barrow (if I remember rightly). It's very
entertaining if you like taking ideas and stretching them as far as they can
go, and further. In the Preface, they say something like..'philosophers are
generally expected to believe in the ideas they present, but we are
scientists and therefore make no claims that our ideas are necessarily true,
or even likely.'... or something similar. Tipler alter went on to write
another book called 'The Physics of Immortality' but it isn't as diverting
as the first one. The central error in his thesis is, I think, that he
assumes that an individual would be recreated, or recreatable, if their
genetic code were known.
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