Paul Davies The Goldilocks Enigma/Anthropic Principle
Posted: Sat Oct 21, 2006 6:31 pm
Anybody read Paul Davies' "The Goldilocks Enigma"? I'm not sure this review fits my image of him (garnered from 2nd sources such as the main website here, not having read any of his books).
I just don't understand enough of the physics involved to have any meaningful opinion. Actually, the whole idea of a developing universe is just incomprehensible to me.
Anyhow, this addresses what I consider to be the other main branch of ID, the fine-tuning of the Universe so that we can exist. From one perspective, this is a silly question: if the universe wasn't able to support life, we wouldn't be here to ask why it does. On the other hand, if the laws governing the initial Big Bang don't require our type of universe to develop and almost all the other types wouldn't support any form of intelligent life, then it is highly unlikely that we should be here.http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2393412,00.html wrote:Why is the universe, like the porridge in the tale of Goldilocks and the three bears, “just right” for life? Even cosmologists have said it looks like a fix or a put-up job. Is it a fluke or providence that it appears set up expressly for the purpose of spawning sentient beings? ...
Anyone expecting Davies to recant his non-religious views and join the intelligent design lobby will be disappointed. “We can't dump all this in the lap of an arbitrary god and say we can't inquire any further,” he says. “The universe looks ingenious, it looks like a fix, and words like meaning and purpose come to mind. But it doesn't mean that we're going to have a miracle-working cosmic magician meddling with events.”
What concerns him in his new book The Goldilocks Enigma is science and the universe's stringent conditions for existence, so finely tuned that even the slightest twiddle of the dials would wreck any hope of life emerging in the universe. “No scientific explanation of the universe can be deemed complete unless it accounts for this appearance of judicious design,” he says. ...
Davies wants to rise above such bickering. “I want to get away from this notion that something has to be accepted on faith,” he says. “That just becomes a sterile argument. These people can argue all night, but you're never going to prove or disprove the other person's position.”
He is fascinated by an alternative answer to the Goldilocks question. “Somehow,” he writes, “the universe has engineered, not just its own awareness, but its own comprehension. Mindless, blundering atoms have conspired to make, not just life, not just mind, but understanding. The evolving cosmos has spawned beings who are able not merely to watch the show, but to unravel the plot.”
I just don't understand enough of the physics involved to have any meaningful opinion. Actually, the whole idea of a developing universe is just incomprehensible to me.