"Proof" of the Anthropic Principle?

[fudgefactorfive]

Off the back of this New Scientist article, which is pay-per-view, and I don't want to pay ...

It begins by claiming "The anthropic principle - which argues that our universe is finely tuned to support life and there is no point in asking why it is so - has been criticised as lazy, untestable science". Maybe. But I didn't think that's what the anthropic principle was. If asked in the pub, my summary would have been it's the idea that the universe is the way it is, and that we are here to observe it, because that's the way it had to be. Being "finely tuned" doesn't come into it. Who's further off the mark, me or the article?

In the next paragraph, it cites the current discrepancy between the huge value of the cosmological constant that current quantum mechanical theory predicts, and the apparent actual low value for it given that everything didn't blow itself apart shortly after the Big Bang and that we are here to read this. You then have to pay to read the rest.

How guessing at the cosmological constant leads to "proof" of any feature of the anthropic principle is beyond me, whatever value it turns out to have. Anyone read the article, or have any thoughts? How can you go anywhere near proving the anthropic principle - surely it's not something you can have "proof" of? It's a scientific "faith", no?

 

[Santino]

It begins by claiming "The anthropic principle - which argues that our universe is finely tuned to support life and there is no point in asking why it is so - has been criticised as lazy, untestable science". Maybe. But I didn't think that's what the anthropic principle was. If asked in the pub, my summary would have been it's the idea that the universe is the way it is, and that we are here to observe it, because that's the way it had to be. Being "finely tuned" doesn't come into it. Who's further off the mark, me or the article?

I was under the impression that the Anthropic Principle is the argument that the Universe is so finely balanced to be able to support life that it can't be chance. If some universal constants were just a tiny fraction different either way life would be impossible. Therefore, the rather feeble reasoning goes, the Universe must have been created specifically for us to exist.

 

[Jorum]

In my opinion a great deal of the anthropic principle is based upon lack of imagination and a supposition that our kind of life is the only kind.

The anthropic principle states in essence:
"if any of a hundred parameters were to change by a small amount life would not be able to exist"

Of course what they are really saying is:
"if any of a hundred parameters were to change by a small amount the forms of life found on earth would not be able to exist"

If these parameters were slightly different the universe would be very different I suppose (as we don't even have a GUT yet who really knows).

However who can say whether life and in what forms could exist in these other universes?

Any reader of good science fiction will be able to imagine life existing completely unrelated to our carbon, dna based view of it. (organised magnetic fields living in a stars corona etc..)

I can imagine creatures that would consider Earth completely inhospitable, after all it is covered in all that powerfully corrosive oxygen to start with.

 

[Santino]

It's kind of like saying 'If pi was really 3.142 and not 3.141... then circles couldn't exist.

 

[fudgefactorfive]

In my opinion a great deal of the anthropic principle is based upon lack of imagination and a supposition that our kind of life is the only kind.

I entirely agree. It does irk me greatly when you see meedja-scientists blithely going on about how the universe is ideally situated for creatures like us.

I like to think about what our solar system would look like to a creature that takes a billion years to bat an eyelid. Would they even see the Earth as a ball in orbit? Or would they just see a star with an incredibly faint ring?

However this particular example - the cosmological constant - is more extreme. From what I'm reading and understanding (a lot, and not a lot, respectively), it's arguing that there really isn't much leeway. Shift the cosmological constant a little bit either way and you have a universe in which no life could exist. You need a certain amount of complexity. To fit the definition of "life", you need chaotic systems, you need autopoiesis, you need distinct regions of differing entropy or you have no thermodynamics for local systems to buck the trend against.

But even if we could "prove" that the CC is "just right", how is that "proof" of the AP?

Isn't it just all pants? If the universe couldn't support any kind of life at all, then we wouldn't be here to talk about it. Since we are here, though - well, probably, I haven't actually ruled out that we're not here - then we're talking about it. Anthropic principle = exercise in the bleedin' obvious?

It has dangerous shades of religionists trying to shoehorn God into the world IMO.

 

[fudgefactorfive]

It's kind of like saying 'If pi was really 3.142 and not 3.141... then circles couldn't exist.

Well quite. There are topologies where pi isn't pi.

 

[brahaminda]

If i remember correctly, and this is off the back of reading "Brief History of Time" (well the edited highlights, anyway ..) there are two versions of the anthropic principle, weak and strong.
The Strong A Princ. states as above, and is basically a rewrite of the old Teleological arguments from Aristotle thru to the Scholastics etc.
The Weak A Princ. is as fudgefactor states, tho (and I'm dead hazy about this as well) the CC is a bit of a sore point amongst some physicists (i.e. those who don't agree with it). The point being that the Universe has a number of constants, which if, altered would not necessarily be inimicable to life, but would be hostile to/impossible for life such as Us.
My main problem with the Strong AP is that it goes beyond the remit of science. Science is more about Description than Explanation. What it acn do is give very detailed descriptions of events that can be replicated, manipulated and used (hopefully) for the greater good. Scientist make statements within the universe. To verify concepts like the Strong AP would require leaving the universe in some way (which is probably why they make so much sense when you're stoned/tripping etc. ).

 

[Santino]

I still don't understand what they mean when they say 'if the cosmological constant were different'. It isn't like there's a dial somewhere that could be have been set to a different number before the big bang happened. The constant is a description of what stuff (i.e the Universe) is like, not some number 'out there' that determines how stuff behaves. Am I missing something?

 

[brahaminda]

It may be that the Cosmological constant isn't quite as constant as it appears

 

[fudgefactorfive]

I still don't understand what they mean when they say 'if the cosmological constant were different'. It isn't like there's a dial somewhere that could be have been set to a different number before the big bang happened. The constant is a description of what stuff (i.e the Universe) is like, not some number 'out there' that determines how stuff behaves. Am I missing something?

Not from within my headspace. That's what I mean about being suspicious of a religious agenda - the only theoretical thing I've seen described that's available to tweak the knobs would be a Designer/Creator.

 

[fudgefactorfive]

It may be that the Cosmological constant isn't quite as constant as it appears

That's very interesting. The whole argument kind of evaporates in that scenario. The first "runs" of the universe would have been utterly sterile - but with each successive crunch-bang, the CC comes down a bit, and eventually, you have a universe capable of sustaining the chaos needed for life.

Thanks for reminding me about Strong vs. Weak as well - I was very well read up on all this stuff about five years ago, but the intervening years of

have taken their toll

 

[brahaminda]

Thanks for reminding me about Strong vs. Weak as well

My pleasure...

 

[laptop]

Yep, I thought that was a pretty shit article

The weak Anthropic Principle is just a tautology - "out of all possible universes, those being worried about by intelligent life-forms will be those capable of harbouring intelligent life-forms".

Er, yeah. Sure.

It's part of a bigger argument over "string theory" - which is where the "10^500 universes" comes from.

 

[brahaminda]

The weak Anthropic Principle is just a tautology - "out of all possible universes, those being worried about by intelligent life-forms will be those capable of harbouring intelligent life-forms".

Thats the thing I kinda like about the weak A P (scuse the lazy typing), it draws a line across all the "How many angels can dance on a pin?"/Metaphysical introspection physics can fall into sometime.
Science, at least as I understand it, isn't about Why, it's about How

 

[laptop]

Science, at least as I understand it, isn't about Why, it's about How

Yep.

And the suggestion of a book to be published in September is that the weak Anthropic Principle is being used by "string theorists" as an exuse to stop asking how - and do lots of angel-countin instead

 

[brahaminda]

Yep.

And the suggestion of a book to be published in September is that the weak Anthropic Principle is being used by "string theorists" as an exuse to stop asking how - and do lots of angel-countin instead

 

[Nickster]

I'm trying to remember the cosmology module from my physics degree but it was a long time ago! I thought the cosmological constant determined whether the universe was a "closed" (will end in a Big Crunch) or "open" system (will continue to expand forever). This also had a knock on effect on the cooling time for all the energy from the Big Bang and the theory of inflation (which always seemed like a fudge to me - that the universe somehow expanded at faster-than-light speeds very early on)

This notion that the chances of life occuring are so mind-bendingly rare as to make it likely that the universe was designed specifically for life on earth to arise smells a bit creationist to me. It's the old object/subject argument. The fact that we are here observing the universe does not make us the reason for its existence.

 

[ska invita]

If you take "Anthro" (man) out of the principle and replace it with life, perhaps then it becomes more feasible, non?

"Life" emerging from non living material seems to have been somehow inevitable - or so I Believe (hallelujah)

 

[bluestreak]

I was under the impression that the Anthropic Principle is the argument that the Universe is so finely balanced to be able to support life that it can't be chance. If some universal constants were just a tiny fraction different either way life would be impossible. Therefore, the rather feeble reasoning goes, the Universe must have been created specifically for us to exist.

the anthropic principal seems a bit silly then, the sort of thing beloved of those scientists of religious bent who can't actually accept that it's all just luck.

 

[Jorum]

Science, at least as I understand it, isn't about Why, it's about How

Exactly.
One of the reasons the ancient Greeks science never acheived it's full potential was that they tended to ask why instead how
(other reasons being an opposition against experimentation, and a believe that logical inferance alone was enough)

To quote someone else
philosophers ask "why?"
scientists ask "how?"
engineers ask "when will it break?"

 

[brahaminda]

Exactly.

To quote someone else
philosophers ask "why?"
scientists ask "how?"
engineers ask "when will it break?"

 

[ska invita]

Hang on - the big bang contained a few basic elements - billions of years have passed and one thing we can be certain of is that the universe now contains more complex forms than before.

It even contains organic life forms where once it didnt.

That the universe moves towards increasing complexity is undisputible. The question is was this inevitable or was it absolute shear luck.

Well, if we repeated the big bang into infinity (not that we can, but say that we could), I am certain that the trend towards complexity and ultimately life would be replicated, no?

 

[Jorum]

I think (but may be completely wrong) that the point they are making about about cosmological constant (which in itself goes in and out of fashion about every 10 years ) is that if it was very high, then the universe would expand at a tremendous high rate, and all things in it would be moving away from each other very very fast.

This means very soon after the "big bang" every particle in the universe would be hopelessly distant from every other, "stranded" with no way of interacting with other particles.
Due to the speed of light limit, eventually each particle would see all the others pass beyond the "visible horizon", leaving it in effect alone within it's own "universe".

There could be no complexity, because there could be no interaction between particles. In these conditions any concept of "life" seems impossible.

How this relates to the AP I don't really understand.
After all we do not have a good enough understanding of the universe to know for certain if the comological constant really does exist, or if it does whether it even could be a different value.
Maybe the concept that these parameters "could have been different" is simply nonsensical.

 

[fudgefactorfive]

Hang on - the big bang contained a few basic elements - billions of years have passed and one thing we can be certain of is that the universe now contains more complex forms than before.

It even contains organic life forms where once it didnt.

That the universe moves towards increasing complexity is undisputible. The question is was this inevitable or was it absolute shear luck.

Well, if we repeated the big bang into infinity (not that we can, but say that we could), I am certain that the trend towards complexity and ultimately life would be replicated, no?

That's kind of the spirit of the idea brahaminda linked to up there - if you assume that the universe is cyclic, you have various "iterations" of the universe, "progressing" towards a state where life is possible. (Though "progressing" is a loaded term.)

In a sense, though, the universe isn't moving towards increasing complexity. Entropy increases. Thermodynamics means that the universe actually tends towards becoming simpler (or have I got that utterly wrong?)

The thing about life is that it "bucks the local trend". Yes, it's true that thermodynamics means that clocks always run down - but the point is, that it only "has to run down" on larger scales. On smaller scales - such as in the chaotic region in between a high area of entropy and a low area, eg. the atmosphere of a planet - you can get self-generating systems occurring that temporarily "break" the laws of thermodynamics, and get more complicated - systems like you and me.

 

[brahaminda]

"progressing" towards a state where life is possible. (Though "progressing" is a loaded term.)

It's a value judgement that really doesn't belong in science.
Iterations is a far more neutral term, and frankly one I'm happier with.
Progress implies and end, or goal, which implies values etc....

 

[ska invita]

In a sense, though, the universe isn't moving towards increasing complexity. Entropy increases. Thermodynamics means that the universe actually tends towards becoming simpler (or have I got that utterly wrong?)

I've been picked up on this before in the science threads, and I agree with you - except that I disagree!

I go along with Ken Wilbers notion of holons (which I have been trying to find a simple link to, but have struggled, as holons are part of a whole other theory for him) in which there is relationship between "span and depth" - best explained in the main tenants proposed by Wilber, please follow this link here :

http://www.esalenctr.org/display/confpage.cfm?confid=10&pageid=113&pgtype=1

this solves the issue of the apparent anomaly quite tidily i think.

 

[fudgefactorfive]

I've been picked up on this before in the science threads, and I agree with you - except that I disagree!

I go along with Ken Wilbers notion of holons (which I have been trying to find a simple link to, but have struggled, as holons are part of a whole other theory for him) in which there is relationship between "span and depth" - best explained in the main tenants proposed by Wilber, please follow this link here :

http://www.esalenctr.org/display/confpage.cfm?confid=10&pageid=113&pgtype=1

this solves the issue of the apparent anomaly quite tidily i think.

That's just a bit over my head Can't help noting the presence of Sex, Ecology and Spirituality in the source material ...

It looks at first glance like some things I've read, but in the area of philosophy more than cosmology. Reminds me of Leibniz and his monads, and back in the old days of quantum physics there was something called S-Matrix or Bootstrap Theory knocking around that was fun to wrap your head round.

Not sure how it relates to the Anthropic Principle or the principle of entropy tending to increase though

 

[fudgefactorfive]

It's a value judgement that really doesn't belong in science.
Iterations is a far more neutral term, and frankly one I'm happier with.
Progress implies and end, or goal, which implies values etc....

Yep for sure.

Regarding counting angels - I'm a bit of a fence-sitter here.

I do object to a lot of it. Particularly in areas like this thread's subject, where it seems as though science is being used to justify.

But is it really fair to expect scientists to remain absolutely scientific at all times? Shouldn't they also be allowed to be philosophers if they want to? When you're working on mind-blowing stuff like cosmology and quantum physics, I'm sure it must be really very difficult to keep your mind free of cosmic implications ...

 

[Santino]

Yep for sure.

Regarding counting angels - I'm a bit of a fence-sitter here.

I do object to a lot of it. Particularly in areas like this thread's subject, where it seems as though science is being used to justify.

But is it really fair to expect scientists to remain absolutely scientific at all times? Shouldn't they also be allowed to be philosophers if they want to? When you're working on mind-blowing stuff like cosmology and quantum physics, I'm sure it must be really very difficult to keep your mind free of cosmic implications ...

They should be philosophers in their own time, not while at work. I don't litter my spreadsheets with existential crises do I?

 

[brahaminda]

I don't litter my spreadsheets with existential crises do I?

Knew there was a reason i got fired from that data-entry job....