From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Leonhard Euler (15 April 1707 – 18 September 1783), Swiss mathematician and physicist, considered to be one of the greatest mathematicians of all time:
Since the fabric of the universe is most perfect and the work of a most wise Creator, nothing at all takes place in the universe in which some rule of maximum or minimum does not appear … there is absolutely no doubt that every affect in the universe can be explained satisfactorily from final causes, by the aid of the method of maxima and minima, as it can be from the effective causes themselves … Of course, when the effective causes are too obscure, but the final causes are readily ascertained, the problem is commonly solved by the indirect method…
– As quoted in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986) by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, p. 150
Anthropic principle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
In astrophysics and cosmology, the anthropic principle (from the Greek, anthropos, human) is the philosophical consideration that observations of the physical Universe must be compatible with the conscious life that observes it. Some proponents of the anthropic principle reason that it explains why the Universe has the age and the fundamental physical constants necessary to accommodate conscious life. As a result, they believe it is unremarkable that the universe’s fundamental constants happen to fall within the narrow range thought to be compatible with life.
The strong anthropic principle (SAP) as explained by Barrow and Tipler (see variants) states that this is all the case because the Universe is compelled, in some sense, for conscious life to eventually emerge. Critics of the SAP argue in favor of a weak anthropic principle (WAP) similar to the one defined by Brandon Carter, which states that the universe’s ostensible fine tuning is the result of selection bias: i.e., only in a universe capable of eventually supporting life will there be living beings capable of observing any such fine tuning, while a universe less compatible with life will go unbeheld.
Definition and basis
The principle was formulated as a response to a series of observations that the laws of nature and parameters of the Universe take on values that are consistent with conditions for life as we know it rather than a set of values that would not be consistent with life on Earth. The anthropic principle states that this is a necessity, because if life were impossible, no one would know it. That is, it must be possible to observe some Universe, and hence, the laws and constants of any such universe must accommodate that possibility.
Anthropic coincidences
Main article: Fine-tuned Universe
In 1961, Robert Dicke noted that the age of the universe, as seen by living observers, cannot be random. Instead, biological factors constrain the universe to be more or less in a “golden age,” neither too young nor too old.[10] If the universe were one tenth as old as its present age, there would not have been sufficient time to build up appreciable levels of metallicity (levels of elements besides hydrogen and helium) especially carbon, by nucleosynthesis. Small rocky planets did not yet exist. If the universe were 10 times older than it actually is, most stars would be too old to remain on the main sequence and would have turned into white dwarfs, aside from the dimmest red dwarfs, and stable planetary systems would have already come to an end. Thus, Dicke explained the coincidence between large dimensionless numbers constructed from the constants of physics and the age of the universe, a coincidence which had inspired Dirac’s varying-G theory.
Dicke later reasoned that the density of matter in the universe must be almost exactly the critical density needed to prevent the Big Crunch (the “Dicke coincidences” argument). The most recent measurements may suggest that the observed density of baryonic matter, and some theoretical predictions of the amount of dark matter account for about 30% of this critical density, with the rest contributed by a cosmological constant. Steven Weinberg gave an anthropic explanation for this fact: he noted that the cosmological constant has a remarkably low value, some 120 orders of magnitude smaller than the value particle physics predicts (this has been described as the “worst prediction in physics”). However, if the cosmological constant were only one order of magnitude larger than its observed value, the universe would suffer catastrophic inflation, which would preclude the formation of stars, and hence life.
The observed values of the dimensionless physical constants (such as the fine-structure constant) governing the four fundamental interactions are balanced as if fine-tuned to permit the formation of commonly found matter and subsequently the emergence of life. A slight increase in the strong nuclear force would bind the dineutron and the diproton, and nuclear fusion would have converted all hydrogen in the early universe to helium. Water, as well as sufficiently long-lived stable stars, both essential for the emergence of life as we know it, would not exist. More generally, small changes in the relative strengths of the four fundamental interactions can greatly affect the universe’s age, structure, and capacity for life.
Origin
The phrase “anthropic principle” first appeared in Brandon Carter‘s contribution to a 1973 Kraków symposium honouring Copernicus’s 500th birthday. Carter, a theoretical astrophysicist, articulated the Anthropic Principle in reaction to the Copernican Principle, which states that humans do not occupy a privileged position in the Universe. As Carter said: “Although our situation is not necessarily central, it is inevitably privileged to some extent.”[14] Specifically, Carter disagreed with using the Copernican principle to justify the Perfect Cosmological Principle, which states that all large regions and times in the universe must be statistically identical. The latter principle underlay the steady-state theory, which had recently been falsified by the 1965 discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation. This discovery was unequivocal evidence that the universe has changed radically over time (for example, via the Big Bang).
Carter defined two forms of the Anthropic Principle, a “weak” one which referred only to anthropic selection of privileged spacetime locations in the universe, and a more controversial “strong” form which addressed the values of the fundamental constants of physics.
Roger Penrose explained the weak form as follows:
“The argument can be used to explain why the conditions happen to be just right for the existence of (intelligent) life on the earth at the present time. For if they were not just right, then we should not have found ourselves to be here now, but somewhere else, at some other appropriate time. This principle was used very effectively by Brandon Carter and Robert Dicke to resolve an issue that had puzzled physicists for a good many years. The issue concerned various striking numerical relations that are observed to hold between the physical constants (the gravitational constant, the mass of the proton, the age of the universe, etc.). A puzzling aspect of this was that some of the relations hold only at the present epoch in the earth’s history, so we appear, coincidentally, to be living at a very special time (give or take a few million years!). This was later explained, by Carter and Dicke, by the fact that this epoch coincided with the lifetime of what are called main-sequence stars, such as the sun. At any other epoch, so the argument ran, there would be no intelligent life around in order to measure the physical constants in question — so the coincidence had to hold, simply because there would be intelligent life around only at the particular time that the coincidence did hold!”
—The Emperor’s New Mind, Chapter 10
One reason this is plausible is that there are many other places and times in which we can imagine finding ourselves. But when applying the strong principle, we only have one Universe, with one set of fundamental parameters, so what exactly is the point being made? Carter offers two possibilities: First, we can use our own existence to make “predictions” about the parameters. But second, “as a last resort”, we can convert these predictions into explanations by assuming that there is more than one Universe, in fact a large and possibly infinite collection of universes, something that is now called a multiverse (“world ensemble” was Carter’s term), in which the parameters (and perhaps the laws of physics) vary across universes. The strong principle then becomes an example of a selection effect, exactly analogous to the weak principle. Postulating a multiverse is certainly a radical step, but taking it could provide at least a partial answer to a question which had seemed to be out of the reach of normal science: “why do the fundamental laws of physics take the particular form we observe and not another?”
Since Carter’s 1973 paper, the term “Anthropic Principle” has been extended to cover a number of ideas which differ in important ways from those he espoused. Particular confusion was caused in 1986 by the book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John D. Barrow and Frank Tipler, published that year which distinguished between “weak” and “strong” anthropic principle in a way very different from Carter’s, as discussed in the next section.
Carter was not the first to invoke some form of the anthropic principle. In fact, the evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace anticipated the anthropic principle as long ago as 1904: “Such a vast and complex universe as that which we know exists around us, may have been absolutely required … in order to produce a world that should be precisely adapted in every detail for the orderly development of life culminating in man.” In 1957, Robert Dicke wrote: “The age of the Universe ‘now’ is not random but conditioned by biological factors … [changes in the values of the fundamental constants of physics] would preclude the existence of man to consider the problem.”
Variants
Weak anthropic principle (WAP) (Carter): “We must be prepared to take account of the fact that our location in the universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers.” Note that for Carter, “location” refers to our location in time as well as space.
Strong anthropic principle (SAP) (Carter): “The Universe (and hence the fundamental parameters on which it depends) must be such as to admit the creation of observers within it at some stage. To paraphrase Descartes, cogito ergo mundus talis est.”
The Latin tag (“I think, therefore the world is such [as it is]”) makes it clear that “must” indicates a deduction from the fact of our existence; the statement is thus a truism.
In their 1986 book, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, John Barrow and Frank Tipler depart from Carter and define the WAP and SAP as follows:
Weak anthropic principle (WAP) (Barrow and Tipler): “The observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable but they take on values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and by the requirements that the Universe be old enough for it to have already done so.”
Unlike Carter they restrict the principle to carbon-based life, rather than just “observers.” A more important difference is that they apply the WAP to the fundamental physical constants, such as the fine structure constant, the number of spacetime dimensions, and the cosmological constant —, topics that fall under Carter’s SAP.
Strong anthropic principle (SAP) (Barrow and Tipler): “The Universe must have those properties which allow life to develop within it at some stage in its history.”
This looks very similar to Carter’s SAP, but unlike the case with Carter’s SAP, the “must” is an imperative, as shown by the following three possible elaborations of the SAP, each proposed by Barrow and Tipler:
- “There exists one possible Universe ‘designed’ with the goal of generating and sustaining ‘observers’.”
This can be seen as simply the classic design argument restated in the garb of contemporary cosmology. It implies that the purpose of the universe is to give rise to intelligent life, with the laws of nature and their fundamental physical constants set to ensure that life as we know it will emerge and evolve.
- “Observers are necessary to bring the Universe into being.”
Barrow and Tipler believe that this is a valid conclusion from quantum mechanics, as John Archibald Wheeler has suggested, especially via his idea that information is the fundamental reality, see It from bit, and his Participatory Anthropic Principle (PAP) which is an interpretation of quantum mechanics associated with the ideas of John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner.
Cosmic inflation
Don Page criticized the entire theory of cosmic inflation as follows. He emphasized that initial conditions which made possible a thermodynamic arrow of time in a universe with a Big Bang origin, must include the assumption that at the initial singularity, the entropy of the universe was low and therefore extremely improbable. Paul Davies rebutted this criticism by invoking an inflationary version of the anthropic principle. While Davies accepted the premise that the initial state of the visible Universe (which filled a microscopic amount of space before inflating) had to possess a very low entropy value — due to random quantum fluctuations — to account for the observed thermodynamic arrow of time, he deemed this fact an advantage for the theory. That the tiny patch of space from which our observable Universe grew had to be extremely orderly, to allow the post-inflation universe to have an arrow of time, makes it unnecessary to adopt any “ad hoc” hypotheses about the initial entropy state, hypotheses other Big Bang theories require.
Ice density
When water freezes into ice, the ice floats because ice is less dense than liquid water. This is one possible example of the anthropic principle, because if ice did not float, it might have been difficult or impossible for living organisms to have existed in water; without the insulating properties of a top ice layer, lakes and ponds would tend to freeze solid and thaw very little during warmer periods. This principle has been criticized as neglecting the existence of the tropical zone and other warmer climates.
Ice is unusual in that it is approximately 9% less dense than liquid water. Water is the only known non-metallic substance to expand when it freezes. The density of ice is 0.9167 g/cm3 at 0°C, whereas water has a density of 0.9998 g/cm3 at the same temperature. Liquid water is densest, essentially 1.00 g/cm3, at 4°C and becomes less dense as the water molecules begin to form the hexagonal crystals of ice as the freezing point is reached. This is due to hydrogen bonding dominating the intermolecular forces, which results in a packing of molecules less compact in the solid.
See: Bernard Carr – Fine-Tuning in Cosmology:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwUhHQZgUV8
Bernard J. Carr is a Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Queen Mary, University of London. His research interests include the early universe, dark matter, general relativity, primordial black holes, and the anthropic principle.
The Anthropic Cosmological Principle
A thorough extant study of the anthropic principle is the book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John D. Barrow, a cosmologist, and Frank J. Tipler, a theosophist and mathematical physicist. This book sets out in detail the many known anthropic coincidences and constraints, including many found by its authors. While the book is primarily a work of theoretical astrophysics, it also touches on quantum physics, chemistry, and earth science. An entire chapter argues that Homo sapiens is, with high probability, the only intelligent species in the Milky Way.
The book begins with an extensive review of many topics in the history of ideas the authors deem relevant to the anthropic principle, because the authors believe that principle has important antecedents in the notions of teleology and intelligent design. They discuss the writings of Fichte, Hegel, Bergson, and Alfred North Whitehead, and the Omega Point cosmology of Teilhard de Chardin. Barrow and Tipler carefully distinguish teleological reasoning from eutaxiological reasoning; the former asserts that order must have a consequent purpose; the latter asserts more modestly that order must have a planned cause. They attribute this important but nearly always overlooked distinction to an obscure 1883 book by L. E. Hicks.
“Final anthropic principle (FAP): Intelligent information-processing must come into existence in the Universe, and, once it comes into existence, it will never die out.”
“At the instant the Omega Point is reached, life will have gained control of all matter and forces not only in a single universe, but in all universes whose existence is logically possible; life will have spread into all spatial regions in all universes which could logically exist, and will have stored an infinite amount of information, including all bits of knowledge which it is logically possible to know. And this is the end.”
The Tiplerian Anthropic principle can be compared with the mystical Omega point (by Marinus Jan Marijs):
© Marinus Jan Marijs
