Copyright ©
by
Kevin
Sharpe and Jonathan
Walgate
Kevin Sharpe
The Union Institute
Harris Manchester College,
ksharpe@tui.edu
www.ksharpe.com
Jonathan Walgate
Writer,
ABSTRACT. The anthropic principle,
that the universe exists in some sense for life, has persisted in recent
religious and scientific thought because it derives from cosmological fact. It
has been unsuccessful in furthering our understanding of the world because its
advocates tend to impose final metaphysical solutions onto what is a physical
problem.
We begin by outlining the weak and strong versions of the anthropic principle, and review the discoveries that have led to their formulation. We present the reasons some have given for ignoring the anthropic implications of these discoveries, and find these reasons wanting - a real phenomenon demands real investigation. Theological and scientific solutions of the problem are then considered and criticized; these solutions provide dead-ends for explanation.
Finally, we pursue the path that explanation
must follow and look at the physical details of the problem. It seems clear the
anthropic principle has been poorly framed. Removing the ambiguities
surrounding the meaning of “life” may lead to more profitable investigations.
Populating the Universe
The Universe – some information to
help you live in it.
It
is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there in
an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is
inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any
finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so
the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be
zero. From this it follows that the population of the entire universe is also
zero, and any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of
a deranged imagination.
(Douglas
Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
What is wrong with this argument? At
first glance, it might seem easier to ask, “What is right with it?” so
appalling is the conclusion. Douglas Adams makes questionable assertions about
the infinity of the universe and the finitude of its inhabited areas, but they
aren’t at the crux of his argument. Infinities aside, the populated parts of
our universe are tiny compared with the open expanses of vacuum it contains; we
call the place “space,” after all. In fact, the Hitchhiker’s Guide could
put up a stern defense for its advice: if you took someone and placed them at
random somewhere in the universe, then allowed them to wander as they pleased,
chance is stacked against their encountering life of any kind, let alone other
people. The improbabilities are so enormous that actually meeting someone would,
likely as not, signal the onset of delusion.
Where does that leave me,
my family, my friends, and our six billion neighbors? The answer is simply “on
planet Earth.” Life does not get placed at random in the universe, it gets
placed very specifically indeed. Speaking as a carbon-based life form, I could
guess without opening my eyes that I must live on a small planet orbiting a
small star, neither too warm nor too cold. I could guess that my planet
probably lay in the outer reaches of a galaxy, sufficiently distant from the
intense central radiation, yet close enough to receive enough heavy elements
for life chemistry to begin. I might correctly guess that my galaxy was of a
certain spiral kind, with neither too many supernovae irradiating me, no too
few to provide the matter to make me. I could guess that I lived in a very
special, very crowded place.
We don’t need to
calculate the local galactic supernova rate before we risk spending money on
birthday presents. The obvious existence of other people is something we take
for granted – common sense rather than a theory. But this kind of “common
sense” conflicts with a principle that has been at the heart of science for
centuries – the principle of Copernicus. Dethroning the earth from the center
of the cosmos, Nicholas Copernicus asserted that we “must not assume that we
hold a privileged position in the cosmos.” Physics trusts that the basic laws,
which we observe here on Earth, are the same everywhere. But the more we
discover of these laws, the more they seem arranged for the fostering of life
here on earth. These “convenient coincidences” are becoming hard to ignore.
Science is built upon observational
data. The most fundamental such datum is
“We observe.” Descartes made this point when he said, “Cogito ergo sum,”
I think therefore I am; we can’t look at the cosmos without being here in the
first place. This is the content of the weak anthropic principle, as spelt out
by John Barrow and Frank Tipler:
The Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP)
The observed values of all physical
and cosmological quantities are not equally probably but they take on values
restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life
can evolve and by the requirement that the universe be old enough for it to
have already done so.[i]
We can’t very well expect to observe a universe incapable of supporting life. Barrow and Tipler use the analogy of telescopes. Optical telescopes can only detect radiation within a restricted band of frequencies. Looking through such a device, we will never find such phenomena as cosmic background radiation and ultraviolet rays from stars. The facts of the optical experiment place boundary conditions on what astronomers will experience. Similarly, the fact that the universe has fostered life places boundary conditions on what we will see.
This is all
uncontroversial – it’s an extension of common logic – but the importance of
this principle depends on the restrictions it actually involves. Life might
have been easy to produce, a simple and unproblematic requirement for a
universe. The weak anthropic requirement might be like asking a university
graduate to add two and two; perhaps any mature universe can support life.
No. The anthropic principle
has hit the limelight because the boundary conditions it places upon the
universe are extremely restrictive. Life chemistry seems an enormously
precarious procedure, vulnerable to the slightest alteration of our universe’s
laws. This has led many people, including Nobel laureates, to the strong
anthropic principle:
The Strong Anthropic Principle (SAP)
The universe must have those
properties which allow life to develop within it at some stage of history.[ii]
The key lies in the word must.
SAP specifies that life cannot have been an accident or a coincidence, but was
a necessary outcome from the word “go.” From here,
it is a short step to arguments about design. Religiously minded people
use the strong anthropic principle to argue that the universe is specifically
designed for us to live within. The remarkable life-supporting properties of
the universe could not be coincidences, they say, but are evidence of a divine
intention at work. A divine whose intent was our creation. For them the
universe didn’t just happen, it was built.
Cosmic Coincidences: The Scientific
Basis for Anthropic Reasoning
What are these coincidences that have stoked up such debate and led people to claim that science has “proved” the existence of God? Cosmologists use the “standard model” of particle physics to describe the universe, involving a large number of free parameters – things such as the mass of an electron, and the relative strengths of gravitational and electromagnetic forces. These factors have precise and special values in our universe, values we can measure, but the mathematics of the standard model works perfectly well if we substitute in other numbers. You just get other universes. On a level playing field, you might expect that varying some of the parameters would make life more likely to occur, while other variations would reduce its chances. Not so. All possible adjustments seem to threaten our existence.
This is best demonstrated
by considering stars. We couldn’t live without stars. Sunlight provides the
energy for life – it fuels biochemical processes – but there is a more
important consideration. Stars are the only places where the complex atoms that
we are made of can be built. Carbon, oxygen, and so on simply cannot come from
anywhere else. These stellar factories need to be special kinds of stars, too.
Enough of them need to “go supernova” to distribute these precious supplies of
elements about the galaxy. If long-lived, supernova-prone, carbon-producing
stars didn’t exist, neither would we.
The universe’s fusion
reactors glue tiny protons together to form more complicated particles and
release energy in the process. The strong nuclear force is what glues nuclei
together. This is very difficult for stars, because to stick protons together,
you must overcome their mutual electromagnetic repulsion. It is impossible to
do this without first turning a proton into a neutron, a convoluted process
taking billions of years. Stars live so long precisely because they have to
take this slow detour – but it might not have been so. If the strong nuclear
force were just a single percent stronger, it would be powerful enough to
overcome the electromagnetic repulsion of protons directly. All stars would
explode, compressing a billion years of nuclear reactions into a single second.
Stars must instead turn
protons into neutrons via the weak nuclear force. This force is the
controlling factor in their reactions, and thus controls the death of stellar
giants - supernovae. As enormous stars burn the last of their fuel, they begin to
fuse heavier and heavier elements. These elements are worse power sources than
hydrogen, and the stars begin to lose the energy that has countered their
gravity. They collapse in upon themselves, and the core becomes a dense neutron
star. This collapse causes a shock wave to explode out from the center, blowing
the heavy elements into deep space, where they may find their way into less
extreme solar systems and provide the fuel for life. An explosion of neutrinos
propels this shock wave from the neutron core, pushing the wave ever outwards.
The neutrinos “push” with the weak force. Were this force slightly weaker, the
shock wave would never be strong enough to propel the vital matter away from
the dead star. Were the weak force stronger, the neutrinos would waste their
time trying to push apart the neutron core itself, and would never reach the
shock wave to help it along. Again, the heavy elements would not escape the
pull of gravity. If the fuels of life are to escape imprisonment inside dead
stars, the weak nuclear force must be very precisely balanced.
“Carbon-based life form”
is a cliché for a reason. Of all the elements that exist, none come close to
the potential for complex chemistry possessed by carbon. Science fiction
writers have alluded to silicon as an alternative, but it is plainly inferior.
If we are to have life, we must have carbon. This means that stars must produce
it.
Stars fuse hydrogen to
produce helium nuclei. These nuclei, consisting of two protons and two
neutrons, are stable and act as the building blocks of all the heavier elements
the star will manufacture. So stable are the nuclei that any element built from
a number of them will be stable itself. Carbon (
Fred Hoyle, a British
astrophysicist, considering this problem, reasoned anthropically. We
know that there is an abundance of carbon in the universe (hey, we ARE an
abundance of carbon in the universe). It follows that there must be something
about carbon which makes the transition from beryllium so favorable that
significant numbers of nuclei can make it within
The new energy level of
carbon was just four percent higher than the He-
Hoyle’s work led him to a
natural conclusion:
I do not believe that any scientist
who examined the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of
nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences
they produce inside the stars. If this is so, then my apparently random quirks
have become part of a deep-laid scheme. If not then we are back again at a
monstrous series of accidents.[iv]
Hoyle’s convictions are
based on an even greater chain of “quirks” of nature, far too detailed to
mention individually. Lee Smolin, Professor of Physics at Pennsylvania State
University, provides a compelling summary in his book The Life of the Cosmos.
He imagines that some of the fundamental constants of the standard model, the
masses of the fundamental particles and the relative strengths of three of the
forces between them, were assigned randomly at the start of the universe. Then
he asks how likely such a universe would be to develop long-lived stars. It’s a
simple piece of mathematics:
The answer, in round numbers, comes
to about one chance in
To illustrate how truly ridiculous
this number is, we might note that the part of the universe we can see from the
earth contains about
Should we really be surprised by the
fantastic odds that Smolin calculates? Why are we not wiping our brows with relief
that we have existed at all? Some philosophers have claimed that we cannot and
should not pay any attention to such probabilities, as the only ones we
can calculate without inconsistency are those that presuppose our existence.
Taking this argument to its logical conclusion, no one should be surprised by
their own existence, since they could never be aware of the converse. William
Lane Craig provides an enlightening metaphor:
Suppose a hundred sharpshooters are
sent to execute a prisoner by firing squad, and the prisoner survives. The
prisoner should not be surprised that he does not observe that he is dead.
After all, if he were dead, he could not observe his death. Nonetheless, he
should be surprised that he observes that he is alive.[vi]
We are entitled, then, to
surprise at our own existence provided we understand our predicament. The
prisoner’s justifiable amazement derives from his acquaintance with guns,
bullets, and the reliability of trained marksmen. The SAP would have it our
world is so unlikely that some mysterious agency must have guided its
development; perhaps some intervening God has handed our sharpshooters blanks.
But the origins of our universe are much more obscure than firing squads.
John Barrow argues we
cannot fully understand our ultimate origins.[vii]
“Limits are ubiquitous. Science exists only because there are limits to what
Nature permits.” The beginning of the universe is one such limit. The problem
can be expressed through our reliance upon time. When we try to understand a
process, we first ask what happened when, basing our knowledge on causes and
effects. There are limits to our ability to measure time, though. Any
measurement has to be performed in the real world, which means it has to
involve a real interaction. The most precise way to measure time employs light
quanta, and the higher the precision you want, the smaller the volume you must
compress the light into. Were this hypothetical volume to get too small, the
energy inside would become too dense and create a miniature black hole. A
Our measurement would break down at
this point: the Planck time, at
A hypothesis will always be involved,
stating that certain events are truly random, that each of them is as likely to
occur as any other. That assumption might be false for reasons we have not
taken into account. If you throw a die and it comes up a six ten times in
succession, if I think the die is true I shall be very surprised, for the
probability of that happening is
Better theories may yet
model the universe’s birth in a more revealing way, but for the time being we
our metaphysical speculations should stick close to the facts. This does not
show, however, that there is nothing to interest us in the fundamental
constants. Science has not demonstrated that this life-supporting universe is
incredibly improbable. But the co-incidence of so many vital phenomena remains
an observable fact, and demands explanation of some sort. The world need not
surprise us to be an object of curiosity and wonder.
Theologians’ interest in the
anthropic principle traces back to their interest in its subject matter – the
Big Bang. Big Bang theory was a “godsend” to those trying to square the
doctrine of creatio ex nihilo (God’s creation of the universe out of
nothing) with modern science. Nineteenth century physics supposed the Universe
had no discernible beginning, simply pursuing its random motions forever from
past to future. The Big Bang posed a new question which cosmologists seemed
reluctant to answer: who lit the fuse?[ix]
That the universe began
did not prove that it was “pushed,” and it did little to warm the overwhelming
vastness of space for theologians who had, four hundred years previously, sat at
its center. But the fingerprint of a divine creator molding a universe
specifically for humanity would revolutionize our thinking. A fingerprint is
just what some religious thinkers have held the anthropic parameterization of
our universe to be.
Bluntly put, this attempt
at “scientifically” proving a creator exists fails for precisely those reasons
outlined above. It involves the insupportable assumption that without a guiding
hand a universe would have selected its fundamental parameters randomly. A divine
purposive force could “explain” any perplexing quirk or oddity of nature.
Experience has shown, though, that careful and sustained investigation of these
quirks can reveal an elegant underlying pattern. A cosmological argument for
the existence of God may seem attractive with our limited present knowledge, so
it is worth recalling some previous occasions when theologians have made the
same mistakes.
Medieval scholars used to
believe that an arrow in flight required constant impetus to sustain its
motion, and some saw the hand of God in every movement. But this did not
improve our understanding of the phenomenon - for one could simply respond “How
does God sustain all motion?” When Newton framed his principle of inertia,
these examples of God’s action fell quietly away.
Cosmology’s push for a
theory of everything involves weaving together the disparate forces at work in
the world, and explaining their common origins. Such work might well begin to
explain the haphazard allocation of values to our “fundamental” constants.
Nineteenth century thinkers might have marveled at the precise balance between
the electrical and magnetic forces, but James Maxwell showed them to be
different aspects of the same phenomenon.
William Paley provides
the best example of a failed attempt to deduce God from the “improbabilities”
of the natural world. A late eighteenth-century philosopher and churchman,
thought the living world provided clear evidence of design. Millions of complex
species abounded, each suited to its ecological niche. The chance of randomly
designed life-forms being so well adapted to their environment and each other
must be at least as preposterous as
Paley is drawing a
distinction between the artifact and the accident. For him,
fabricated things betray their creators through their orderliness and purpose.
This philosophy was fatally undermined by Darwin’s theory of natural selection.
This procedure is a step-by-step process which slowly builds up complex designs
on simpler successes. In honor of this evolution, Richard Dawkins titled one of
his books The Blind Watchmaker.
Natural selection, the blind,
unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know
is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all
life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not
plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can
be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind
watchmaker.[xi]
Evolution may be a blind
process, but it still generates great and complex systems. Paley’s mistake was
to contrast purposive design with randomness, and ignore the middle ground.
(This was a natural assumption in the nineteenth century, when the laws of
thermodynamics seemed to describe all physical processes as random fluctuations
tending towards disorder.) Paley treated the complexity of biology as its final
cause or purpose, and postulated a means by which it might be bought about.
His work could not advance our understanding of the living world. Darwin
investigated the complexity, and found within it patterns suggestive of a
deeper order.
Theistic arguments are a misuse of
either version of the anthropic principle, which say nothing about the creation
of the universe. There are alternatives to this crude philosophizing, however.
A more astute theologian, grappling with the SAP, focuses upon life: “The
universe must have those properties which allow life to develop within
it at some stage of history.” Life is the Aristotelian final cause of
the universe. It is its purpose, as is expressed in Christian thought by
Humanity’s special relationship with God.[xii]
This final cause
is the linchpin of orthodox theological thinking about the anthropic principle,
which leads scholars astray. This theory of causation was framed by Aristotle
over two thousand years ago, and was concreted into Catholic philosophy by the
Great Scholastic, Thomas Aquinas. Aristotle describes how events might have
four different causes – material, formal, efficient, and final. The final cause
is explicitly teleological, focused upon the end results of events. An acorn’s
final cause is not the branch from which it drops, but the oak it may become.
Aristotle’s work makes it clear that these “causes” are really just kinds of
explanations for things. He is sensibly pointing out there are several ways to
explain why we find acorns lying on the ground. Aquinas took this theory and
translated it into Catholic terms, introducing God as the First Cause of
everything. This doctrinal addition blurred the status of these “causes,” since
it was taken to imply that God actually intervened in all things to render them
extant. Philosophers, who revered Aristotle, began to misunderstand his final
causes - they thought he was describing a mystical, magical force that pulled
objects towards their intended destiny.
Orthodox theology has
always stressed both the transcendent and the personal nature of God, but the
two make awkward bedfellows. Scholars have thus leapt at any indication of
God’s personal nature that might be read into the world. The mysterious force
of a misunderstood Aristotle provides just that, because it implies a divine
sense of purpose and intention. The anthropic principle then provides a cosmological
stage for such a deduction. Attempts to demonstrate a creator God are rebuffed
but the overt presence of a final cause – life – surely proves the existence of
a purposeful divine force? But this whole argument is based on a fallacy - one
cannot read “Purpose” into a simple opportunity for explanation. Aristotle
would likely be turning in his grave, for in promoting his explanatory final
cause for the universe, anthropic thinkers are in fact rejecting the promise of
explanation in favor of a mysterious supernatural agency.
Theological approaches to
the anthropic principle attempt to defeat the Copernican principle and return
humans to the center of the universe. Scientific attempts to rationalize
anthropic coincidences have been just the reverse - directed towards showing
our presence in this particular reality is merely a matter of chance. Their ad
hoc metaphysics is vulnerable to the same objection leveled at religion - they
abandon the explainable in favor of the unknowable.
Rather than imagining something
restricting the number of possible universes, recent scientific
explanations for the anthropic observations describe a vast number of extant
universes. The idea of parallel worlds is now common both in science fiction
and in quantum mechanics. The motivation is simple – if at least
Suppose a million lottery tickets are
sold, and then one number out of that million is selected. The holder of that
number wins the prize, so that number seems special. But in a deeper sense it
is no more special than any of the other numbers in the lottery. By the nature
of the lottery, somebody must win, and each of the numbers has an equal
chance of winning. It is only after the event that one number gains a special
status. The holder may feel lucky as a result; but somebody had to get
lucky![xiii]
Many suggestions have
been made about just how such a huge ensemble of universes might come about.
Max Tegmark, of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, has proposed
that all logically possible universes exist.[xiv]
His circular justification, though, is the anthropic principle itself. This
proposal could be used to “explain” almost anything, since a multitude of
unlikely situations must exist somewhere in this universe-set. As Smolin says,
“To argue this way is not to reason, it is simply to give up looking for a
rational explanation. Had this kind of reasoning been applied to biology, the
principle of natural selection would never have been found.”[xv]
Barrow and Tipler also
argue that every logically possible universe exists, and derive this result
from the disputed Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. Barrow and
Tipler are inadvertently conflating “logically possible” with “physically
possible,”[xvi] but
it’s a useful move to make. It allows them to create a quantum cosmology where
one boundary condition might constrain the multiverse such that every
member-universe would be life supporting. Strongly anthropic indeed, but
nevertheless inexplicably so. We have been asking, “Why these initial
conditions?” Barrow and Tipler can ask themselves, “Why this boundary
condition?”
Even if science upholds
its “many universes” hypotheses, the central mystery would go unanswered: why
is this universe the life supporting one? Relocating the coincidence
from the Big Bang to an infinite multiverse does not lessen its importance. The
observation does not explain why we’re in this relative paradise. It
boils down to “We’re here because we’re here,” and that satisfies no one.
Smolin’s objection still stands: this kind of reasoning is a kind of giving up.
If we won a lottery with odds of
Physicists and cosmologists who
appeal to anthropic reasoning seem to me to be gratuitously abandoning the
successful program of conventional physical science of understanding the
quantitative properties of our universe on the basis of physical laws. Perhaps
their exasperation and frustration…has gotten the better of them….The influence
of the anthropic principle on the development of contemporary cosmological
models has been sterile. It has explained nothing, and it has even had a
negative influence, as evidenced by the fact that the values of certain
constants, such as the ratio of photons to nuclear particles, for which
anthropic reasoning was once invoked as explanation can now be explained by new
physical laws… I would opt for rejecting the anthropic principle as needless
clutter in the conceptual repertoire of science.[xvii]
Pagels is expressing
widely held sentiments, but we must not lose sight of the fundamental constants
that inspired such reasoning. His admiration for the “program of…understanding
the quantitative properties of our universe on the basis of physical laws” is
well founded, but the fine-tuned pattern remains. To re-quote Smolin, this “is
not something we can let go unexplained.” Explanation cannot be accomplished by
hypothesizing some metaphysical “reason,” be it a multiverse or a purposeful
creator. Such thinking stops our reasoning dead in its tracks, for it imposes
an unknowable “other” on top of the natural world. Instead we must draw
inspiration from reality, looking more closely at the details. The
productive question to ask is not the popular “How did the universe guarantee
these particular values of the fundamental constants?” It is the seldom
considered “Exactly what does this pattern of fundamental constants guarantee
for the universe?”
The Strong Anthropic Principle, “The
universe must have those properties which allow life to develop within
it at some stage of history,” is meaningless unless we know what the word
“life” signifies. How can we be sure our definition will be significant? Debate
rages over the status of viruses, both biological and electronic. Philosophers
ponder whether an artificial intelligence could ever become “alive.” And the
Starship Enterprise encounters, on a weekly basis, “life, but not as we know
it.” Darwin greatly increased our understanding of what it is to be alive when
he overturned Paley’s pseudo-anthropic argument. Richard Dawkins, in fact,
introduces his book, The Selfish Gene, with the claim that evolutionary
science renders meaningless all other attempts to answer the question, “Why are
we here?”[xviii] But
Dawkins is exaggerating, and we still don’t understand perfectly what life is.
J. L. Mackie suggests that had the balance of nature been different, and life
as we know it impossible, there might have been different potentialities for
the organization of matter of an equally “fruitful” character.[xix]
There is a role here for the anthropic principle.
The strong anthropic
principle needn’t simply be assumed or concluded. It can be used, like a
hypothesis. Life of some kind exists, of this we can be sure. Working back from
this, we see that the universe must satisfy certain very specific conditions.
Rather than take the traditional extra leap back into metaphysics, let us look forward
from the conditions themselves. If we work out precisely what it is they
prescribe, we might refine our uncertain understanding of life. The universe
may be fine-tuned for a family of behaviors of which life is only one member.
We shall discover precisely what life-like activity the universe is promoting.
The basic particles of
the universe must be capable of fusing to form more ordered structures: heavier
elements with a complicated chemistry. But the story doesn’t end there, for the
universe must then locate this more complicated material in the right place. It
must find itself in orbit around a long-lived star. Why is orbiting a star so
crucial? It is the only place in the universe cool enough for heavy elements to
be stable, yet hot enough to provide a constant source of energy for chemical
reactions. An enormous energy flux, as the heat of nuclear fusion radiates into
the void, is the vital factor.
The special conditions on
which the anthropic principle is based provide this guarantee: that systems
capable of chemical interaction are placed within a stable flow of energy. What
kind of behavior is characterized by these conditions? The answer is
dissipative structures. Ilya Prigogine postulated, then discovered the
existence of a certain kind of order in far-from-equilibrium conditions.[xx]
The immutable law of entropy decrees that all environments closed off from the
rest of the world will degrade a disordered state. An open environment,
however, can use the energy flows of entropy to “ride” the boundary between
order and chaos with fantastic results. These dissipative structures can develop
into the intricacies of life itself, as Erwin Schrodinger describes. “This
difference in structure is of the same kind as that between an ordinary
wallpaper in which the same pattern is repeated again and again in regular
periodicity and a masterpiece of embroidery, say a Raphael tapestry, which
shows no dull repetition, but an elaborate, coherent, meaningful design traced
by the great master.”[xxi]
To put it in Smolin’s words, “There is no reason to believe either a galaxy or
the universe as a whole remotely approaches the complexity and intricacy of the
organization of a single living cell.”[xxii]
The anthropic conditions
of the universe ensure the development of dissipative structures, but it would
be premature to identify such structure with life. Per Bak, Kurt Weisenfeld,
and Chao Tang developed in
Mathematician John Conway
designed “The Game of Life” in
Jupiter’s Red Spot is a
dissipative system governed by SOC. So are the spiral arms of galaxies. Bak and
Chen have now theorized that fractals themselves develop by means of SOC.[xxvi]
It seems possible all naturally occurring complexity arises this way.
“The theory of complexity and the theory of criticality may generically be one
and the same thing.”[xxvii]
Yet this creative
mechanism is dependent upon the universe’s initial conditions, as sensitive as
life itself to the dictates of the fundamental constants. Had the strong force
been just slightly stronger, the universe may have transformed into an inert
soup of helium within moments. This is a crucial result - what we understand as
life is the crowning example of the family of complex, dynamical structures.
Those who attend the anthropic principles should recognize the precise message
of cosmology, for it is not that the universe is special because it supports
life. The universe is special because it supports order, encouraging complexity.
Imposing our human sense of direction upon the cosmos is the last word in
arrogance. This is the dangerous attraction of the strong “anthropocentric”
principle – it flatters us to see the heavens revolve around our selves. Our
explanations and understanding will only progress when we attend to the details
of reality, for the miraculous solutions exist for us to find, within our
world, not without. The truth will prove more attractive than any metaphysical
fantasy. A better phrasing of the “anthropic” principle, one drawn from cosmic
coincidences and not read into them, would be:
The universe must have those properties that allow the development of complexity through self-organization.
More poetically, it might read thus:
The universe must be as creative and
fruitful as possible.
[i] John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler (
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Some oxygen is produced, of course, and is in limited
quantities vital to life. It is also a necessary stepping-stone on the way to
calcium, magnesium and iron. But it is not produced to the exclusion of carbon
itself.
[iv] Fred Hoyle (
[v] Lee Smolin (
[vi] William L. Craig (
[vii] John Barrow (
[viii] John Polkinghorne (
[ix] Whether “the cause of the Big Bang” is a meaningful
or meaningless concept is a metaphysical question which will not be covered
here.
[x] William Paley (
[xi] Richard Dawkins (
[xii] Many theologians have centered their attention on
what this says about us as people. Nancey Murphy and George Ellis betray
a common bias as they phrase the strong principle: “Intelligent life must exist
in the universe; it is a necessity.”[xii]
Where did that quintessentially human characteristic intelligence enter the
picture? It stems from the amusing version of the weak principle: “We cannot
but observe a universe capable of supporting life-forms clever enough to frame
this very principle.” True enough, but this just shows that the WAP is
logically trivial - it’s a tautology. The extension from WAP to SAP is not
trivial - it depended upon our many observations about the fundamental
constants, which imply nothing about intelligence. They describe the exacting
constraints for life chemistry of any kind. It’s very tempting to talk
about intelligence, and create an “anthropocentric” principle that returns
humanity to the center of the universe. There’s no evidence to substantiate
such talk.
[xiii] John Gribbin and
[xiv] Marcus Chown (
[xv] Smolin (
[xvi] The anthropic principle deals with
[xvii] Heinz Pagels (
[xix] J.L. Mackie (
[xx] Gregoire Nicolis and Ilya Prigogine (
[xxi] Erwin Schrodinger (
[xxii] Smolin (
[xxiii] Per Bak, Kurt Weisenfeld and Chao Tang (
[xxiv] Per Bak and Kan Chen, (
[xxv] Per Bak, Kan Chen and Michael Creutz (
[xxvi] Per Bak and Kan Chen (
[xxvii] Per Bak and Kan Chen, (
[xxviii]