Abstract
Contrary to popular and variant interpretations, the Anthropic Principle is an ideological statement about scientists.
The physics concerns the unexpected carbon-life orientation of certain structure defining features of our universe that do not concur with the cosmological projections of modern physics. The pointed nature of the physics indicates the direction that one might look in for the as yet undefined dynamical structure mechanism that is normally expected to explain why the universe is configured the way that it is, rather than some other way. Brandon Carter called this “a line of reasoning that requires further development”.
Contrary to popularized [1] modern and “variant” interpretations, the Anthropic Principle was originally formalized by Carter as an ideological statement against the dogmatic non-scientific prejudices that scientists commonly harbor, that cause them to consciously deny anthropic relevance in the physics, so they instead tend to be willfully ignorant of just enough pertinent facts to maintain an irrational cosmological bias that leads to absurd, “Copernican-like” projections of mediocrity that contradict what is actually observed.
The first known occurrence of the phrase “anthropic principle” appears to have been by the theoretical astrophysicist Brandon Carter, in his contribution to a 1973 symposium titled “Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with Observational Data” honoring Copernicus’s 500th birthday.[2] His article articulated the anthropic principle as the contrary of what has come to be called the Copernican principle, which denies that the situation of humans in the cosmological order is in any way privileged. (Just as Copernicus argued that the Earth is not the center of the universe, we now know that the sun is a typical star located in a typical galaxy.) Carter’s symposium paper, “Large Number Coincidences and the Anthropic Principle in Cosmology,” included the statement: “Although our situation is not necessarily ”central”, it is inevitably privileged to some extent” (IAUS 63 (1974) 291).
However unfortunate, Carter’s point lends a certain amount of real scientific credence to the claims of IDists, that scientists willfully suppress credible evidence that they wrongly perceive to be in support of the creationist’s position. It is just as unfortunate that this makes the lies and embellishments of the ID movement into a necessary evil, to counterbalance to the unscientific dogma that [3] scientists commonly project into science.
Carter was talking about an equally extreme form of counter-reaction-ism to old historical beliefs about geocentricism that cause scientists to automatically dismiss evidence for anthropic “privilege” right out of the realm of the observed reality. I intend to put very heavy emphasis on this point, because people [1] go to unbelievable lengths to distort what Carter said on that fateful day in Poland, in order to willfully ignore this point as it applies to modern physics speculations and variant interpretations, which are neither, proven, nor definitively justified, theoretically.
Why do none of the popular definitions of the Anthropic Principle include what Carter actually said?
…a reaction against conscious and subconscious – anticentrist dogma
This unfounded “Copernicanism” is a the real problem across the board for science, and it doesn’t just go away, especially when there is a constantly raging culture war going on in the background,
Carter’s example was:
Unfortunately, there has been a strong and not always subconscious tendency to extend this to a most questionable dogma to the effect that our situation cannot be privileged in any sense. This dogma (which in its most extreme form led to the “perfect cosmological principle” on which the steady state theory was based) is clearly untenable, as was pointed out by Dicke (Nature 192, 440, 1961).
-Brandon Carter
Carter expounded on the anthropic coincidence that Robert Dicke had deduced from Dirac’s Large Numbers Hypothesis. Dicke had noted that “the forces are not random, but are constrained by biological factors” that cause the universe to evolve contrarily to the standard cosmological prediction in a unique manner that favors carbon life. It is important to note that this evolving physics includes all carbon-based-life, and this also limits life to a narrow range of time in the history of the universe. But this feature also dictates that the same combination of “homeostatic” environmental balances [4] that define the Goldilocks Enigma will occur on similarly developed planets in similarly developed galaxies that exists along the same fine “layer” or spacetime/location that our galaxy evolved on, so there is absolutely no apparent reason to assume that the physics applies exclusively to only one planet, or to a single form of carbon-based life.
Add to that the creation/evolution “debate” and you have all the makings for a very bad situation for science, where zealots will either, embrace what physicists commonly call the “appearance of design”, as being just that, or, on the other side of the fanatical coin, anti-zealots will all together deny that there is any such implication for “specialness” in the physics whatsoever, while appealing to multiverses and quantum uncertainty, in lieu of causality and first principles. This is done in order to “explain-away” the evidence, rather than to honestly recognize and give credible time to the most readily apparent implication for a life-oriented cosmological principle that is indicated by the “appearance of design”. The anticentrist’s tendency to deny the significance of the observation is an over-reaction to pressure from religious extremists and from ill-considered assumptions about human arrogance, which doesn’t even make sense if we’re spread-out across the universe like bacteria on a thin slide of time. Unfortunately for science, it is also a perfectly true example of Carter’s point, as anticentrists typically and wrongly believe that such an admission constitutes evidence in favor of the religious fanatic’s argument, so willful ignorance takes the place of science when the argument is a culture war between zealots and their antifanatical counterparts.
But it is an unavoidable fact that the anthropic physics is directly observed to be uniquely related to the structuring of the universe in a way that defies [5] the most natural expectation for the evolution of the universe in a manner that is also highly-pointed toward the production of carbon based life at a specific time in its history, (and over an equally specific, fine-layer or region of the Goldilocks Zone of the observed universe).
If you disallow unproven and speculative physics theory, then evidential support does necessarily exist that carbon-based life is somehow intricately connected to the structure mechanism of the universe, and weak, multiverse interpretations do not super cede this fact, unless a multiverse is proven to be more than cutting-edge theoretical speculation.
That’s the “undeniable fact” that compels Richard Dawkins and Leonard Susskind to admit that the universe “appears designed” for life! There is no valid “weak” interpretation without a multiverse, because what is otherwise unexpectedly observed without the admission of speculation, is most-apparently geared toward the production of carbon-base life at a particular time and region of the observed universe. Their confidence comes from the fact that their admissions are qualified by their shared “belief” in unproven multiverse theories, but their interpretation is strictly limited to equally non-evidenced “causes”, like supernatural forces and intelligent design.
These arguments are fine in this context, but they do not erase the fact that the prevailing evidence still most apparently does indicate that we are somehow relevantly linked to the structure mechanism, until somebody proves that it isn’t so, so we must remain open to evidence in support of this, or we are not honest scientists, and we are no better than those who would intentionally abuse the science. We certainly do not automatically dismiss the “appearance” by first looking for rationale around the most apparent implication of evidence.
That’s like pretending that your number one suspect doesn’t even exist! There can be nothing other than self-dishonesty and pre-conceived prejudicial anticipation of the meaning that motivates this approach, and often *automatically* elicits false, ill-considered, and, therefore, necessarily flawed assumptions, that most often elicit equally false accusations about “geocentricism” and “creationism”. That’s not science, it’s irrational reactionary skepticism that is driven without justification by sheer disbelief and denial.
And then along came this highly inconvenient… WHOOPS! WHAT’S THIS SUPPORTING HERESY that we must only work to explain-away?!?!
Does the motion of the solar system affect the microwave sky?
Lawrence Krauss even talks about this direct observation:
THE ENERGY OF SPACE THAT ISN’T ZERO
But when you look at CMB map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us?
That’s crazy. We’re looking out at the whole universe. There’s no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun — the plane of the earth around the sun — the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe.
-Lawrence Krauss
“That’s Crazy”… “There’s no way”… Really, Larry?… Are you sure that it isn’t more-like… willful ignorance and denial? AKA, “Anticentrist Dogma”.
Or isn’t it actually compounded supporting evidence for the life-oriented cosmological structure principle that we already have theoretical precedence for?
The problem here isn’t that we don’t have evidence, (make that, compounded evidence, and/or independently supportive evidence), the problem is that nobody is looking into this from any perspective that isn’t aimed at refuting the significance of the evidence because scientists refuse to believe what they see, and because they are ideologically disposed to deny and ignore the creationist question.
Scientists have had some success at this, too, because it has been discovered that the correlation applies to a specific region of galaxies like ours, but they act like they don’t have a clue, (and I’m sure that they don’t), that this is exactly what the [6] Goldilocks Enigma predicts will be found.
It isn’t a case of not having evidence, rather, it is a matter of unscientific interpretation and an unwillingness to look at the physics straight-up, without automatically dragging some abstract and unproven assumptions about quantum observers into it, to see if maybe something that we do quite naturally might make us entirely necessary to the [7] energy-economy of the physical process.
If you take Brandon Carter’s statement and bring it with you to the consensus of scientific opinion, then you might begin to understand why the riddle of the near perfectly balanced universe hasn’t been resolved in thirty years of desperate attempts:
And it ain’t pretty:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.2462
References
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
- http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1974IAUS...63..291C
- http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/krauss06/krauss06.2_index.html
- http://oldwww.fuw.edu.pl/~mirkoz/cosmology1.pdf
- http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0512148
- http://evolutionarydesign.blogspot.com/2007/02/goldilocks-enigma-again.html
- http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2004/09/30/2003204990
