In his preface, Krauss admits that philosophers and theologians have objected to his meaning of `nothing’ and claim that he does not understand it. Krauss’s initial response is to make the gratuitous ad hominem reply, “I am tempted to retort here that theologians are experts at nothing.” He then says that for them, “Nothing is `nonbeing,’ in some vague and ill-defined sense.” Well, even though I am a scientist rather than a philosopher or theologian, on this issue I agree with them and think that the idea of nothing as the absence of anything not logically necessary is much more precise and well-defined than Krauss’s imprecise ideas of `nothing,’ such as “the absence of space and time itself”. (If space and time are emergent properties, how does one define precisely their absence? How can one define precisely the absence of emergent approximate properties like wetness?)
Michael Brooks said something similar at New Scientist. Here’s Cornelius Hunter on the book.
Page concludes:
In his final paragraph of his Afterward, Richard Dawkins makes the prematurely triumphalist statement, “And now we can read Lawrence Krauss for what looks to me like the knockout blow.” To me as a fellow scientist, it appears Krauss has instead swung far wide of the goal, striking only the air with his philosophical speculations that do not address the truly deep questions of existence.
Oh and, by the way, from the files: William Lane Craig is “disingenuous,” and he “shocked” Larry Krauss in a recent debate?
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