They are certainly not scientific explanations or explanations of any sort.īy contrast, the Strong Anthropic Principle - the theory that the universe is designed for life - is a scientific explanation. To sum up, tautologies like the Weak Anthropic Principle or the “Weak Language Emergence Principle” are literally meaningless. The remarkable emergence of language in man still requires explanation. One anthropologist says, “There is nothing at all remarkable about the emergence of language in man, because if language had not emerged in man, we wouldn’t be able to ask the question.” The other anthropologist, if he were a sensible man and a good scientist, would dismiss his colleague’s nonsensical theory because it’s tautological. To get a better sense of the tautological nature of the Weak Anthropic Principle, consider two anthropologists discussing the remarkable emergence of language in man. It isn’t science and it isn’t an explanation of anything - no tautology is. The Weak Anthropic Principle isn’t a scientific explanation for the fine-tuning in the universe. It’s merely a sentence in which the predicate is the same as the subject. The Weak Anthropic Principle is a tautology. The Weak Anthropic Principle, which is widely held by atheists, is meaningless: Only in a universe that permits the existence of intelligent beings can intelligent beings exist - i.e., only a universe with intelligent beings can be a universe with intelligent beings. The implication is that there’s nothing surprising about the fine-tuning and no reason to take the Strong Anthropic Principle seriously - that is, there’s no reason to infer design. We couldn’t not find it, because, if the universe were not fine-tuned, we wouldn’t be here. The proponents of the Weak Anthropic Principle purport to explain the fine-tuning as uninteresting, because without fine-tuning we would not be here to comment on it. This seems to be the obvious (and I will argue only) explanation for the remarkable and precise fine-tuning that the data reveals. The Strong Anthropic Principle explains the fine-tuning as purposeful, with a goal in mind. Both principles are efforts to explain the fine-tuning of the universe for life. In the most recent segment, “Our universe survived a firing squad - and it’s just an accident?”, Bob and his guests discussed the Strong and Weak Anthropic Principles. It’ fascinating and I highly recommend listening to the podcast.
This is quite remarkable, and the authors have written a very nice paper exploring the probabilities involved in this apparent fine-tuning in considerable detail.
It’s very clear from astrophysics that many physical variables in the early universe needed to take very specific values - with very little margin for error - to permit the emergence of life. Bob Marks has a wonderful podcast with Swedish mathematician Ola Hössjer and Colombian biostatistician Daniel Díaz, regarding a recent paper they published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics on fine tuning for life in the universe.
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