Nikolai Eberhardt is a German émigré physicist, author of From the Big Bang to the Human Predicament (1998)[1] and of The final Paradigm: Tragedy, Religion, Knowledge and Folly in Our Neuro-Mechanical Life (2008).[2] In the Final Paradigm he explores the value of religion in a purely mechanistic world- and self-view. In the spirit of Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751) he derives understanding of humanity, including culture and religion, not from the evolutionary approach — which he does not oppose, but transcends — but from considering humans as self reproducing, intelligent bio-mechanical robots, or biobots.
Eberhardt, born 1930 in Estonia, has German, Swedish and Russian ancestry. He studied philosophy in Graz, Austria and physics in Munich, gaining a Physics Diploma in 1957, and a Doctor of Science degree (Dr. rer. nat.) in 1962 from the Institute of Technology in Munich. He served as Professor of Electrical Engineering at Lehigh University (Emeritus from 1995).[3] Intermittently he also served as Adjunct Professor in the Science, Technology and Society program. Besides numerous publications, he has multiple patents to his credit in the areas of color-television tubes, microwave devices, robotics and instrumentation.[4] He was Digest Editor of the 1976 IEEE International Microwave Symposium.[5]