Templeton Foundation awards grants for speculative physics
Boston Globe: The Foundational Questions Institute, which is funded by the John Templeton Foundation, launched today an ambitious international effort to fund physics research with potential theological implications. The first round of $2,2 million grants will go to 30 physicists at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and other top institutions.
The institute will not tackle explicitly religious questions like "Does God exist?" but will instead focus on deep questions in physics that may be too speculative or philosophical for government funding such as whether the fundamental laws of nature seem specially designed to allow life, and whether there are truths about the universe which physics is inherently incapable of proving says the Boston Globe.
Comments
WHICH ARE THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS?
If the Templeton Foundation looks for answers to fundamental questions in science, it should obviously make those questions explicit first. Two suggestions: Is Einstein's second postulate - the speed of light is independent of the speed of the light source - true? Did Clausius really prove in 1850 that heat engines working between the same two temperatures have the same maximal efficiency? The importance of the first question has been expressed by Einstein himself in the following two quotations: "If the speed of light is the least bit affected by the speed of the light source, then my whole theory of relativity and theory of gravity is false". "I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based on the field concept,i.e., on continuous structures. In that case, nothing remains of my entire castle in the air, gravitation theory included, [and of] the rest of modern physics". The importance of the second question (about Clausius' proof) is even greater.
Pentcho Valev
Posted by: Pentcho Valev | August 7, 2006 1:58 AM