In the perspective of these violences of matter and field, of these ranges of heat and pressure, of these reaches of space and time, is not man an unimportant bit of dust on an unimportant planet in an unimportant galaxy in an unimportant region somewhere in vastness of space?
No! The philosopher of old was right! Meaning is important, is even central. It is not only that man is adapted to the universe. The universe is adapted to man. Imagine a universe in which one or another of the fundamental dimensionless constants of physics is altered by a few percent one way or the other? Man could never come into being in such a universe. That is the central point of the anthropic principle. According to this principle, a life-giving factor lies at the centre of the whole machinery and design the world.
John A Wheeler's Foreword to 'The anthropic cosmological principle' by John Barrow and Frank Tipler
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment