The Big Bang in Reverse

Frank J. Tippler, in a book entitled, The Physics of Immortality, tries to blunt the pessimism of our age somewhat by likening the earth to a womb within a relatively young universe from which we would proceed to colonize space and thereby gain time for us to continue doing whatever it is we do beyond the moment when the earth becomes uninhabitable. In support of his theory, Tippler points to the remarkably rapid progress we are making in technology. And even if conditions elsewhere (in space) were not necessarily suited to sustain life as we know it, he argues, that we, by virtue of projected advances in robotics, rocket and computer science, would be certain to find a way to survive just about anywhere as some variation of today's computer chip.

It is concerning this last point that Tippler's theory is most likely to run into trouble. If, as he states, it were indeed possible to download all human knowledge to be contained within a more durable form, the resulting "chip" could still only be regarded as a tool. And any tool can in fact never exceed the parameters imposed by its function. Unless we agree to re-embrace the now largely discredited, strictly mechanical view of the universe in which man is no more than a cog, the moment the last living organism consigns its existence to something it might have created would invariably trigger the Big Bang in reverse.