However, philosophers of science have been slow to awaken to the significance of these developments. Whatever the attitude one adopts toward spacetime singularities, it is evident that they raise a number of foundational problems for physics and have profound implications for the philosophy of space and time. Others hoped that peaceful coexistence with singularities could be achieved by proving a form of Roger Penrose's cosmic censorship hypothesis, which would place singularities safely inside black holes. In the light of these results, some physicists adopted the attitude that, since spacetime singularities are intolerable, general relativity contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
#Earman and solomon problem with frequency interpretation series#
This attitude evaporated in the face of a series of theorems, due largely to Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, which showed that Einstein's general theory implies that singularities can be expected to occur in a wide variety of conditions in both gravitational collapse and in cosmology. Until the 1960s, however, spacetime singularities were thought to be artifacts of the idealizations of the models.
Quantum Gravity Tends to Resolve Singularitiesīig Bang Cosmology Not Especially Congenial to FaithĪlmost from its inception, Einstein's general theory of relativity was known to sanction spacetime models harboring singularities. Stellar Collapse Implies Theistic Destroyer Induction from Earlier Theories' Breakdown? Tolerance or Intolerance toward Singularities? The apparent irrelevance of cardinality to practices of counting infinite sets in classical field theory and Fourier analysis is noted. The singularity exemplifies the sort of gap that is likely to be closed by scientific progress, obviating special divine action. The need for and progress in quantum gravity and the underdetermination of theories by data make it difficult to take singularities seriously. The analogy between the Big Bang and stellar gravitational collapse indicates that a Creator is required in the first case only if a Destroyer is needed in the second. Whether one dismisses singularities or takes them seriously, physics licenses no first moment. A physical theory might have no metric or multiple metrics, so a ‘beginning’ must involve a first moment, not just finite age. The cosmic singularity provides negligible evidence for creation in the finite past, and hence theism.
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