{"id":4509,"date":"2012-03-25T12:18:44","date_gmt":"2012-03-25T16:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=4509"},"modified":"2012-03-25T16:48:53","modified_gmt":"2012-03-25T20:48:53","slug":"nothingness-smackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=4509","title":{"rendered":"Nothingness Smackdown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Theoretical physics, as practiced in the mainstream media, seems to be moving from a mania about multiverses to a religious battle over nothingness.  On one side we have physicist <a href=\"http:\/\/krauss.faculty.asu.edu\/\">Lawrence Krauss<\/a>, with his best-selling new entry into the atheism book sweepstakes: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather\/dp\/145162445X\">A Universe from Nothing<\/a>.  Krauss is backed by Richard Dawkins, who compares the book&#8217;s devastating effect on religion to that of Darwin&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>On the other side we have philosopher David Albert, backed by a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.templeton.org\/what-we-fund\/grants\/investigations-in-the-philosophy-of-cosmology\">million dollars<\/a> from the Templeton Foundation (see more <a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=4453\">here<\/a>), who has a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/03\/25\/books\/review\/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html\">review<\/a> out this morning in the New York Times characterizing Krauss as &#8220;pale, small, silly, nerdy&#8221; (his ideas, not him, I think).<\/p>\n<p>The big debate here is over what one means by &#8220;nothingness&#8221;, which seems to me characterizable as nothing of interest.  I guess though that there is a lot of money to be made in the nothingness business.  The next opportunity for a big payday from nothingness will be on Thursday, 11 AM GMT, when Templeton will <a href=\"http:\/\/www.templetonprize.org\/pdfs\/Templeton_Prize_2012_advisory.pdf\">announce<\/a> who gets this year&#8217;s $1.7 million dollar prize.  I&#8217;ve no idea who will get it, just that it won&#8217;t be Krauss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Theoretical physics, as practiced in the mainstream media, seems to be moving from a mania about multiverses to a religious battle over nothingness. On one side we have physicist Lawrence Krauss, with his best-selling new entry into the atheism book &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=4509\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4509"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4515,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4509\/revisions\/4515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}