[net.origins] The Anthropic Principle

rlh@cvl.UUCP (Ralph L. Hartley) (10/23/84)

Sagan and co. sometimes go a little off the deep end. I think he's
trying to mix science with religion. Personaly I think that this is
almost as dangerous as mixing religion and politics. (No flames.
This is not the same as religious PEOPLE in politics)

The anthropic principle needs to be taken in perspective. It is a
modification of the older "Cosmological Principle". It goes something
like this.

Cosmological Principle:	Our position in the universe is nothing special.

			This axiom is the result of a lot of experience.
			The earth is not at the center of the universe.
			It goes around the sun.
			The sun is not the center of the universe.
			It is about mid-way out from the center of the
				galaxy.
			The galaxy is not the center of the universe.
			There dosn't seem to BE a center of the universe!

Very Clever Person:	But most of the universe is empty space.
			There is matter where we are.
			Dosn't that make it special?

Anthropic Principle:	The only thing special about our position is
				that we are here.
			It makes no sense to consider our position
				special because it has us in it.
			If it didn't we wouldn't be able to consider it.

Cosmological Principle:	Ok. Among the places where we could be our
			position is nothing special.

It starts to look like religion when you change the Cosmological
Principle to "Our position in the universe is nothing special and among
all the possible universes ours is nothing special". If you then
replace the Anthropic Principle with its corresponding generalization
and add a lot of phylosophy, you start to get the weird stuff.

The universe we observe is the way it is because otherwise we would not
observe it.

You can let your imagination go wild but it is the Cosmological
Principle that is a real theory that makes real predictions. The only
way to falsify the Anthropic Principle is to prove the we cannot exist.

This is not very relevant to the Science v Creation (sue me) debate but
it does concern origins and it does give a (slightly) more balanced vew
of the subject of an earlyer posting.

				Ralph Harltey
				rlh@cvl
				seismo!rlgvax!cvl!rlh