Two very bright persons being an asshole. The physicist Lawrence Krauss writes a book,
On the Origin of Everything, in which, he claims, the question of how it is that there is something rather than nothing is dealt with and answered. David Albert, a philosopher of science, writes
this review, claiming that the
nothingness Krauss starts with is full of relativistic quantum fields -- hardly
nothing. Krauss, Albert suggests, is a petty nerd. Later, Krauss calls Albert
moronic. All in all, very edifying.
Leaving aside the issue of manners, what do you guys think about the controversy? I have the impression that Albert is probably right, and there is a sense of
emptiness which is important and according to which a universe with quantum fields is not
empty.
