CitationsAdd new citationList by: CiterankMap Link[1] Anthropic principle
Author: Wikipedia Cited by: Peter Baldwin 3:51 AM 12 August 2011 GMT URL: | Excerpt / Summary In physics and cosmology, the anthropic principle is the philosophical argument that observations of the physical universe must be compatible with the conscious life that observes it. Some proponents of the argument 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 that the fact that the universe's fundamental constants are within the narrow range thought to allow life is not remarkable.
The strong anthropic principle as explained by Barrow and Tipler (see variants) states that this is all the case because conscious life, in some sense, needed to exist. On the other hand, in a sufficiently large universe, some worlds might evolve conscious life regardless of adverse conditions. Douglas Adams used the metaphor of a living puddle examining its own shape, since, to those living creatures, the universe may appear to fit them perfectly (while in fact, they simply fit the universe perfectly). Critics argue in favor of a weak anthropic principle similar to the one defined by Brandon Carter (see variants), which states that the universe's ostensible fine tuning is the result of selection bias, e.g. in the long term, only survivors can report their location in time and space. |
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