Fighting fatalism: the anthropic principle

You may already be aware that modern cosmology has presented us with a strange conundrum, which is that the universe is precision engineered for life. This has only been known about for the last couple of decades yet is rarely talked about in the popular science sector of the media. It has been met with frightening indifference and fatuous explanations which seem to me anti-scientific and reminiscent of the Dark Ages.

 

A range of physical constants (e.g. the gravitational, cosmological, weak interaction, strong interaction and fine-structure constants) are finely tuned to an extraordinary degree, e.g. 120 decimal places in the case of the cosmological constant. 

 Fine tuned for what? For the emergence of life. Also, the Big Bang point source of the cosmos started off with just the right amount of entropy to allow life to develop. (Entropy is a measure of the amount of disorder in a closed system.) There is no physical, testable explanation of how this degree of disorder happened to be there.

In an attempt to evade or avoid answering this question some have resorted to what is loosely known as the  Anthropic Principle which states that we can observe only those values of the fundamental constants and quantities that are compatible with our existence. The fact that we exist 'explains' (?!) why the science is such as it is. If it weren’t we would not be here to ask. This is a fatuous, fatalistic and anti-scientific argument which I hope will be illustrated by the following imaginary dialog.

I have just been blindfolded and shot at point blank range by 50 people with live ammunition and AK 47s. Yet I’m alive and unharmed. How could this have happened?

You don’t need to ask why. You are here to ask the question and that is all the explanation you need. The question of how improbable this is does not come into it.

I have no money and cannot walk and live alone, yet I get enough food, water and air to survive. How do you think this happens?

Why ask? You are getting enough life support because you are here to ask the question.

My body comprises a trillion cells plus many more times that number of bacteria and viruses, all hierarchically organised and orchestrated with extraordinary complexity and precision to produce or be associated with a conscious, creative being. How could such an improbable state of affairs ever have come about?

No problem. It just happens, otherwise you would not be here to ask the question.

Most of the universe and the processes of life are a total mystery. How can we go about investigating this?

No need. The fact that we are here explains it all. End of story.

Looking at the universe it appears to be organised in a very clever way, interconnected and finely engineered to mind boggling precision on an incomprehensible scale. How did this come about?

Why ask such awkward questions? If you had not been here it would not have happened. Chill out, man.

How can I chill out?

Just bury your head in the sand.

I exist. Why?

The fact that you exist is enough to explain why you exist.

Hmm

Imagine where we would be now if Aristotle or Newton or Einstein had thought this way.

See also

Why the future is unpredictable

Bridging gaps

The five-fold threat to science

The doctrine of chance

Our precious planet

Is there meaning behind random events?

Reweaving the rainbow

Fighting fatalism

Are some scientists from the planet vulcan?

Chimpanzees and a free lunch

Distorting reality

Jean Paul Sartre: not the way to Peace on Earth

What is truth?

John

 cosmik.jo@gmail.com

Birds before dinosaurs, fish before birds?

I am not a biologist or zoologist in any active sense (amateur or professional)  but do take an interest in the major developments. One thing I have always been sceptical about is the notion that birds descended from dinosaurs. This theory has almost become a dogma but the evidence is very sparse and the conclusions don’t follow.

Feathers have been found on certain dinosaur fossils and, like birds, they give birth via eggs but :

• Fish also give birth via eggs

• The body plan of birds is nothing like that of dinosaurs

• Feathers could be evolutionary remnants from previously evolved birds

• No truly intermediary species between bird and dinosaur has been unearthed. (The archaeopteryx is not generally accepted as fulfilling this role.)




It  seems more feasible to me, as a non-expert, for a creature to have made the transition from sea to air rather than land to air. Swimming in the water could surely have developed into swimming in the air. Fins could have become wings.  Could not the first birds have evolved from fish? Flying fish have aerodynamic characteristics like a bird and are able to stay aloft for up to 45 seconds.

  

 Evolving wings and a very light, but in relative terms immensely powerful, streamlined body to propel land-based organisms through the air and against gravity seems like a very big step. Fish already know how to glide, dive and propel themselves in a fluid. Given the inventiveness and intelligence of the natural world I can’t see why this possibility is rarely discussed in the scientific press.

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Sinosaurotpery

I was encouraged to see that some qualified researchers who have previously been ignored are beginning to get taken seriously for proposing dinosaurs from birds rather than birds from dinosaurs. See, e.g., Alan Feduccia’s Is it a bird? Is it a dinosaur? In the New Scientist, 28 April 2012. This does not propose fish as the starting point but it claims there is mounting evidence for birds having preceded dinosaurs.

Feduccia claims that Sinosaurotpery (see photograph above) ,the small fossil recently found in China, an earlier discovery of which was first described in Nature in 1998, was erroneously jumped upon as evidence for dinosaurs from birds. To quote: ‘...no evidence then or now has emerged showing that these structures are anything other than collagen fibres supporting a typical reptilian frill. The fact that they were located within a clearly demarcated body outline ...was completely ignored.’ He also points out that 'current orthodoxy dictates that the entire suite of avian flight architecture, including aerodynamic wings and specialised brain structures, evolved in earthbound dinosaurs...’ To me as an outsider this does seem a stretch on credibility.

 It would all be a lot simpler if fossilised birds were found. Unfortunately, they are by necessity so finely constructed that they do not lend themselves to fossilisation, so we may have to wait for a clearer picture to emerge. It is a case of absence of evidence not being evidence of absence.  But this does seem to me another example of evolutionary biologists seeing what they expect to be there rather than what is in front of their eyes.

What gives me, with no training in biology or zoology or paleontology, the right to comment? Nothing. But sometimes people from outside the field can see things afresh or stimulate a professional scientist to think outside the box of the current dogma or say things which may risk prejudicing his career or credibility but which nevertheless need to be taken seriously.

 John

Reach me at cosmik.jo@gmail.com

See also http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/hagfish.html

You are more than a human resource

Philip Hunter in Prospect (April 2012) states the slightly politically incorrect, but nevertheless quite probably true, message that ‘IQ turns out to be a consistent indicator of success for individuals, nations and companies.’  He cites two books: IQ and the wealth of nations (2002) and IQ and global inequality (2006) both by Richard Flynn and Tatu Vanhause which give extensive evidence and arguments for this.

If by ‘success’ we mean earning power there is no doubt that, all else being equal, higher IQ makes you more able to solve problems which require speed and complexity of reasoning, and this is bound to be of immense practical value in achieving goals in everyday life, science, business or care for others. There are many other factors that have a bearing on how much money you are able to earn and on your role in society. E.g. artistic talent, inventiveness, lateral thinking, social skill, communication skill, cunning, empathy, compassion, competitiveness, ruthlessness, perseverance, honesty, affability, physical strength, physique and attractiveness. However, intelligence is probably the single biggest factor and often a necessary condition for the others to be effective, rightly or wrongly.

In general people are much more likely to admit to a bad memory or laziness in acquiring knowledge or bad education or lack of talent or lack of imagination than to a having a low IQ. Why are people so touchy about their innate intelligence? And why is it taboo to admit different IQ levels in different racial or social groups? 

 Human beings have a strong tendency to gauge a person’s worth by how useful he or she is. In the west this tendency has increased with the secularisation of society and what was once called the Personnel department in an organisation is now Human Resources. Labour is sold on a free market basis where supply and demand dictates the wage level and people accumulate signs of wealth which come to be regarded as marks of status and prestige in a meritocracy. Hierarchies in western societies are becoming steeper again, returning to what they were before the social reforms of a century ago  instigated by a strange mixture of Marxism and Christianity; and the welfare of those at the bottom is becoming increasingly precarious. A large strata of society have to work longer hours to support a family than a generation ago and it is no longer possible for most people to bring up a family on the wages of one man or one woman.

It is bad enough to have a hard life, working long hours, with no job security, fear of being thrown into debt by illness, no time to enjoy life, little hope of giving our children a reasonable education and no period of retirement prosperity to look forward to. But if on top of this the lowest paid in society are to be regarded as trash because they are not so intelligent or as useful as those above them this is not only a tragic denial of a person’s spiritual value to our Creator but, as the victims at the bottom of the social order also lose faith in their divine worth, they will feel even more oppressed.

When that happens they will follow whoever presents themselves as a saviour. If God is removed from their worldview they will follow whoever sets himself or herself up as the one to offer security, prosperity and purpose. Adolf Hitler did it in a secular democracy, the Wiemar Republic, in the 1930s Germany, offering all these rewards to a deprived de-Christianised populace. It worked for a while but the end result was hell, mercifully superseded by a post-war administration which at least attempted to re-instate Christian values.

So it worries me when I see people basing their self worth and that of others on material success, status and money. History teaches us that they can be swept away without warning by economic collapse, war, plague, famine or natural disaster, and then, what...?

For a nation state to run effectively and fairly we have to recognise the reality that people are different and have, through accident or providence, different degrees of intelligence and other attributes. It is the only way that everyone can be matched to one of the multifarious tasks that need to be performed in any country. But in a spiritual sense we are equal and if we follow the commands of Jesus Christ we are on the way to making our earthly existence more like heaven than hell. Fortunately, in my own country (UK), despite aggressive atheism, the Christ-inspired values are still prevalent. But how long will they last without constant spiritual renewal to remind us that we are more than a human resource?

 See also Equal but not equal

John

cosmik.jo@gmail.com