Atkins, distinguished physical chemist at Oxford University.

Atkins, distinguished physical chemist at Oxford University. Convinced that all human knowledge is reducible to the explanatory categories of the natural sciences, Atkins thinks that the domain of scientific discourse is truly limitless. Accordingly, he says that it is the task of science “to account for the emergence of everything from absolutely nothing. Not almost nothing, not a subatomic dust-like speck, but absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. Not even empty space.” P. W.

Atkins, “The Limitless Power of Science,” in Nature’s Imagination: The Frontiers of Scientific Vision , edited by John Cornwell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 131. For a criticism of this essay, see William E. Carroll, “Reductionism and the Conflict Between Science and Religion,” The Allen Review 15 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 19-22. 14 ibid. , p. [^217]: Italics are in the original.

15 For a very good account of Hawking’s analysis, actually the Hartle/Hawking analysis, see Robert John Russell, “ Finite Creation Without a Beginning . .,” in Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature , op. cit., pp. 293-[^329]: J. Hartle, S. Hawking, “Wave Function of the Universe,” in Physical Review D, 28 (1983), pp. 2960-2975; S. Hawking, “The Boundary Condition of the Universe,” in Astrophysical Cosmology , edited by H.A. Brück, G.V. Coyne, M.S.

Longair (Vatican City: Pontifical Academy of Science, 1982), pp. 563-572; S. Hawking, “The Quantum State of the Universe,” in Nuclear Physics B 239 (1984), pp. 257-276. See also, Keith Ward’s discussion, “Creation and Modern Cosmology,” in Religion and Creation (Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 287-315. 16 Hawking, A Brief History of Time , op. cit., p.

[^136]: The two “most remarkable features that I have learned in my research on space and time [are]: 1) that gravity curls up spacetime so that it has a beginning and an end; 2) that there is a deep connection between gravity and thermodynamics that arise[s] because gravity itself determines the topology of the manifold on which it acts.” Hawking in Hawking and Penrose (1996), op. cit ., p. 103. 17 ibid. , p. [^76]: 18 ibid. , p. [^141]: C.J.

Isham thinks that the Hartle/Hawking model is philosophically superior to the standard Big Bang model with an initial singularity. “[T]hese [quantum fluctuation] theories are prone to predict, not a single creation/seed-point, but rather an infinite number of them. .