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8/21/2003 01:32:00 PM | Brad Plumer

Nerd corner... Do multiple universes exist? Jim Holt at Slate considers the arguments pro and contra. Which brings to mind this old but nifty Scientific American article by physicist Max Tegmark, which sets the following outlandish proposal alongside other, equally outlandish proposals:

I have suggested that complete mathematical symmetry holds: that all mathematical structures exist physically as well. Every mathematical structure corresponds to a parallel universe. The elements of this multiverse do not reside in the same space but exist outside of space and time. Most of them are probably devoid of observers. This hypothesis can be viewed as a form of radical Platonism, asserting that the mathematical structures in Plato's realm of ideas or the "mindscape" of mathematician Rudy Rucker of San Jose State University exist in a physical sense. It is akin to what cosmologist John D. Barrow of the University of Cambridge refers to as "ð in the sky," what the late Harvard University philosopher Robert Nozick called the principle of fecundity and what the late Princeton philosopher David K. Lewis called modal realism. Level IV brings closure to the hierarchy of multiverses, because any self-consistent fundamental physical theory can be phrased as some kind of mathematical structure.
Cool, huh? Read it all. It might be ludicrous, but then, as Michael Riordan argues in recounting the discovery of the quark, ludicrous theories sometimes get their due. Meanwhile, Robert Park gives us The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science. Warning sign #7--"The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation"-- obviously kicks the multiverse theory in the teeth. Boo. Where's Thomas Kuhn when you need him?



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