Digital Physics and Me [Pdf]

GOD, THE WORLD, AND DIGITAL PHYSICS

Christ's Body and Christianity's The Thirteenth Apostle Embodiment

Tales of Grace: Dandelions and In Review: Fishing Lures Mark Salzman and Richard Wilbur PERSPECTIVES a journal of Reformed thought Volume 16 Number 5 contents May 2001

J by Gayle Boss The Body of Christ and the 4 AU Sufficient? bv Wdliarn 1. Vande KODD~~ Embodiment of Christianity by Isaac C.Rottenberg ...... 7

6 Christiana's Progress A

DP and Me bv Ross Rhodes

In the Yeast of Sacred Things by Frederick Zydek Cover design by Ross Rhodes.

The Word of the Lord Came to 24 Ezekiel The Problem with Ecstasy by George Brown, Jr. 20 by loan Iuagerman Curbow 2 2 HOWFair the Fiats of the Caller Are bv David Schelhaas

Coeditors- Roy M.Anker Book Editor Poetry Editor Science Editor David E. Tlmmer, Leanne Van Dyk Scott Hoezee Francis G. Fike Donald L. Cronkite Boardof Editors: James D. Bran, Carol J. Cook. Karin Granberg-Michaelson. Nonnan Kansfield, Eun~ce Mc Garrahan, David Schelhaas, Rein J. Vanderhill.Joan Zwagerman Curbow ContnlbutingEditors: Carol Bechtel, Douglas J. Brouwer. Chstina de Groot, Mark E. De Vries, Evelyn Diephouse, Paul Fries, \VesIey Granberg-ivlichaelson,Scott Hoezee, Gretchen Gaebelein Hull, George Marsden, George I. Mavrodes, kchard J. Mouw, John M. blulder, Cornelius Plantinga,Jr.,Jon Pott, Marchiene Vroon Rienstra, Carol~neJ. Simon,John Stapelt,James Van Hoeven, Allen Verhey, Ronald A. Wells, Merold W/estphal, Nicholas Wolterstorff Business Manager: Janice M.Ericson

Perspectives(1SSN:0888-5281) IS published ten times per year (monthly except in July and Aug~~sr)by Reformed Church Press. Pmspectiues' purpose is to express the Refonned faith theologically; to engage issues that Reformed Christians meet in personal. ecclesiastical, and societal life; and thus to contribute to the mission of the church of Jesus Christ. Subscriptions: $24.95 per year, contact the Ed~torlalOffice. Copyright O Reformed Church Press, 2001. Manuscripts for publication are welcome. Send floppy diskette and hard copy to the Editorial Office. Enclose SASE for return of original materials. Advertising for books, conferences, and faculty openings is welcome. For space reservations or for a rate sheet, deadline schedule, and mechanical requirements, call or fax the Editorial Office Editorial Offlce: PO Box 1196, Holland. IW 49422-1 196; (616) 957-6528 Fax:(616) 957-8508 E-mail: perspecuves-Qhotmail.com POG- Send address changes to PPaspecties, P.O. Box 1196, Holland, MI 49422-1196. Periodical postage paid at Grand Rapih, Michigan.

2 / PERSPECTIVES MAY 2007 DP AND ME to speak of a convergence. Physicists became more and more convinced of the essential by Ross Rhodes mathematical nature of "particle" behavior, and computer scientists became more and more confident of their ability to mimic the Digital Physics ("DP")is a suitably neu- natural world through the strict mathemati- tral scientific term for a breathtaking philo- cal rules of computer programming. sophical concept. It refers to the hypothesis It was left to an unorthodox scientist whose that all of physics-which is to say, all of our career straddled both physics and computer universe-can be rendered by a digital com- science to put two and two together and sug- puter. Everything from melting ice in our back- gest that there might be a very good reason yard to black holes in the cosmos should be for this convergence: it might be that the expressible as a computer program, according physicists are actually studying some under- to digital physics. The reason this should be lying computer program, while the computer so is that our universe itself is the manifesta- scientists are "reverse engineering" that same tion of a computer program, being run on some program. That is to say, it might be that the ultimate computer-not so very different, in natural world as we know it is actually a simu- principle, from our own computer games and lation being run on a computer, and that the virtual reality simulations. computer scientists' programming is actually Digital physics arose at the intersection of a kind of re-invention of the existing program- physics and computer science. Physicists have ming that generates the simulation that we long noted that, at the most elementary level, know as our universe. our universe operates according to mathemati- The physicist/computer scientist who first cal principles. In many respects, the funda- articulated the connection is Edward Fredkin. mental behaviors observed on the quantum Fredkin started his career in the early 1950s level defy common sense when interpreted as as one of the original computer hackers on tiny specks of matter. The interpretation of one of the original computers. He helped to quantum mechanics ("QM") that seems best establish one of the world's most prominent to fit the facts is that these behaviors are re- research laboratories in computer theory at lated to the mathematical principles in some MIX and he also found time to study with unimaginably fundamental way. As the sci- some of the greatest physicists of our time, ence popularizer John Gribbin puts it, "nature including the Nobel Prize-winning theorist seems to make the calculation and then present Richard Feynman. In his work, Fredkin made US with an observed event." fundamental contributions to both disciplines, Meanwhile, computer science has demon- frequently driven by his unwillingness to ac- strated ever greater success at "modeling" the cept conventional wisdom in either field. behaviors of natural phenomena. That is, by Chance and a native curiosity had placed programming a computer with a series of Fredkin in a unique position to discover the step-by-step instructions for taking one set of Rosetta Stone that would connect the seem- information (say, the position of an electron) ingly unrelated fields of physics and computer and changing that information according to science. a mathematical formula, computer scientists The link for Fredkin turned out to be cel- have been able to simulate on the computer lular automata-a method of programming monitor the same puzzling behaviors observed according to a small number of simple rules by the physicists in the laboratory which, when repeated over a large number At some point in the development of both of cycles, can develop the same dense com- physics and computer science we could begin plexity we observe in the physical systems of

14 / PERSPECTIVES MAY 2001 the natural world. Cellular automata programs units of our world. According to this interpre- have been written to mimic the behavior of gas tation, we may examine the world in closer and volumes, electrons traveling down a copper closer detail to find what lies beneath, and we wire, ant colonies, and most famously the evo- will find that the math is the bottom layer. lution displayed in the "Game of Life." Fredkin Making no connection between this bizarre saw applications of the cellular automata com- concept and my earlier vision, I resisted it. I puter architecture everywhere he looked in searched for the gears and wheels below the physics. He began to believe that the match surface of this material world, which I still couldn't be a mere coincidence, and he formed thought of, at some level, as real-as having the idea that has come to be known as the significance in itself. "Fredkin HypothesisJ': the universe is a com- While puzzling over a particular quantum puter, programmed according to cellular au- mechanical conundrum-the effect of con- tomata principles. In his seminal papers on the scious measurement on some properties which subject written in 1992, Fredkin outlined a were previously known-it conceptual basis for harmonizing the finite, digital and deterministic world of computers with the seemingly infinite, continuous and random world of quantum mechanics. With that stroke, Fredkin offered the prospect of a other conceptual model of Fredkin, Edward. "Flntte Nature." Proceed- new world-view. the workings of QM was of- ings of the XXVIlth Rencontre de Moriond. 1992. Fredkin by a somewhat different route. I grew eminent physicist Erwin up in the church and readily accepted the Schrodinger once suggested -. "A New Cosmogony." Proceed~ngsofthe moral and social teachings of Jesus. However, that no such conceptual Physlcs of Cornpt~tut~onWorltshop. October I also grew up in the scientific age and I could model is available to the hu- 2-4, 1992. not easily accept those parts of the scriptures man mind), I latched onto that spoke casually of physical miracles and this "interpretation" of the -. "Digital Mechanics: An Informational other things that were obviously impossible in physics: the universe is a Process Based on Reversible Universal CA." the real world. In my twenties, I underwent computer program. I then Phys~caD 45 (1990), pp. 254-70. something of a conversion while meditating on re-read all of my source ma- Ostoma, Tom and Mike Trushyk. "Cellular the resurrection of Christ. Rather than directly terial and found nothing Automata Theory and Physics: A New Para- asking the question whether such a thing was contradicting the interpre- digm For The Unification of Physics." Los possible, I asked only what it implied for the tation; in fact, I found that Alamos National Laborntoq e-Print Archive physical world if Christ actually had risen from a great deal of the inexpli- (1999). < http://cvm.rnsu.edu/-dobrzele/dpl the dead. In an instant, the world to me was cable was thereby ex- Publications/Ostorna-Trushyk/Cell> transformed from the strictly scientific matrix plained. I then began to Rhodes, Ross. "Commentary on the Finite of cause-and-effect into a manifestation of the think in terms of a conver- Nature Hypothes~sof Edward Fredkin." word of God. The vision, in brief, was that a gence. (2000). unless God willed it to be. For many years, this the Word. And the Word Siegfried, Tom. The Bit and the Pendulum: thought remained with me without any basis was with God and the Word How the New Physics of Information Is Reuo. apart from revelation. Then I became oddly was God. He was with God lutioniztng Science, John Wiley &Sons (New fascinated with the operation of quantum me- in the beginning. All things Yor k 2000). chanics. came into being through The most widely credited interpretation of him, and without him not Wright, Robert. "Did the Universe Just Hap- pen?" The Atlantic Monthly (April 1988),pp. QM holds that there is no underlying physical one thing came into being" 29-44 (interview with Edward Fredk~n). existence associated with the fundamental

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