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~ Paul Adrian Maurice Dirac ~
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The sad truth of the matter is that 99% of all people that attempt to debate "fine-tuning" and the anthropic principle don't even know what Dirac's Large Numbers Hypothesis[!] is, and it is an equally absurd insult to science, Charles Darwin, and Evolutionary theory, that it has come down to agenda motivated activists using politics to push the so-called, "Intelligent Design Theory" into the public education curriculum in order to expose the equally ludicrous idea that the methodical and systematic nature of nature can somehow be rationalized away into the mathematically idealized world of infinities and random probabilities, where everything somehow happens this way for no good reason.
You don't have to be a fanatic to think that's not EVEN wrong!
Albert Einstein vehemently disagreed with the idea of a "meaningless" unguided universe for his entire life, maintaining that there is an underlying structure that produces a guiding method to nature's madness, but he realized that this was just physics, not god. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize naturally guided higher-level structuring in nature... but Dr. Einstein held so strongly to his "belief" because this is what the most natural extension of his beautiful theory of relativity told him, so he could not bring himself to deny the implication, even though he could never prove the critically important point that the universe be finite and closed.
That point is critical to the significance of the anthropic principle.
The implications of the cosmic coincidences are distinctly pointed in our favor if the forces are strictly constrained to the observed universe as the only possible outcome of our big bang, (finite, yet evolving), because probability theory doesn't apply, as we can only produce "what-if" scenarios that predict what might happen if we could tinker with the existing physics, not that it could be different from what is actually evidenced.
"Free Thinkers", like Vic Stenger and Nick Bostrom have developed a slew of theoretical rationale that attempts to bypass the observed universe, but rationale is what they're full of, because empiricism always trumps that bs, and that is the winning point in any argument that includes theoretical speculation, including "multiverses", many worlds, random probabilities, an infinite number of possible universal wave functions, quantum uncertainty... etc., the observed universe defines the most conservative mainstream scientific approach, so it is necessarily the naturally preferred theory.
The "ID" movement currently has the upper-political-hand, which is the only thing that matters to those that are down in the trenches of school-policy decision making, and the louder that the opposition cries foul, the greater becomes the mainstream impression that IDists must have some valid point to "teaching the controversy", or there wouldn't be so much of a big stink made over it. Sadly, defenders of the science behind evolutionary theory are damed if they do or don't. But there is also a strong reactionary tendency for defenders of science to automatically try to explain-away the strange physics of the anthropic principle, instead of looking into it for a good physical reason for why we might necessarily be required players in the evolutionary process of the universe.
Normally, a curious coincidence in nature causes scientists to say something like, Wow!... "I wonder what these coincidentally POINTED occurrences are all about?!?..." but what causes otherwise good scientists to automatically assume a postion of significance-denial instead, is more often than not the result of a knee-jerk response to fanaticism, whose effect is also often compounded by their own ideological bias, but as demonstrated on this site, that type of reactionary behavior can result in some very reckless thinking.
This is where the hard-right typically meets the extreme-left, so to speak, and somehow or another the system works in spite of it's more radical facets to the benefit of all... in the long run.
There is also a more natural tendency to think it arrogant for us to dare even consider reasons why us little humans might possibly bear any real significance in our vast universe, but it is only the indignant pride of human-arrogance that will enable us to allow this "belief" to stick in our craw hard enough that we would deny the implications of substantial evidence to the contrary when we don't like what the science is telling us. That defines a willfully ignorant form of fanaticism, in of itself, and this is detrimental to science when the closest thing to truth lies between ideological extremes.
That's where the real importance to science comes into play in all of this, because burried within the fanaticim and unscientific motivations lies the reality of " higher-function " in nature, which ID proponents identify with "purpose". This is actually very important to science, (to the kicking screaming chagrin of many a good scientist), so it is important that somebody carry the torch until the physics for the actual mechanism that constrains the forces of the universe is understood, even if they're wrong about everything else. The reason that this is important is because, like it or not, whatever physics constrains the values of the forces is also what determines the parameters and validity of a grand unified theory, and possibly the theory of everything, as well, if the most accurate cosmological principle is anthropic in nature.
Living organisms obviously embody arrangements of matter into complex structures. They transform chemicals and, in an orderly fashion, transport and store them in purposeful ways. Above the level of individual organisms, they form societies and ecosystems. All of us are familiar with these fundamental biological notions, and we are all part of these processes. Order seems to be the name of the biological game, and evolution leads to more complex organisms and more organized structures.
Thus, goes the argument, the second law of thermodynamics is not contrary to the existence of life; rather, it is the cause of life. That law drives evolution to higher levels of complexity and to more sophisticated societies and technologies for the sole purpose of disseminating energy gradients.
The more complex the structure the more effective is the energy dissemination. Populations are better in this respect than single individuals; ecosystems even more so, and most effective of all -- so far -- are human high-tech societies[@].
Subtle background structure in deep astronomy photos; CSL-1 gravitational lens in Capodimonte Deep Field:
http://photos12.flickr.com/18135101_1ef7723b85_b.jpg
http://photos13.flickr.com/18135102_07a58fd89d_o.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rmforall/sets/435988/
That does not mean that this "specialness" implies anything more than a real physical need for a uniquely fitting "key stone" within the larger universal structure, nor need one conclude from this that the laws have been designed. Quite to the contrary, the most significant life enabling balance of all, the near-perfect "flatness" of our universe[!] indicates that life habitable environments naturally evolved from the physics of a big bang that resulted in an extremely close, "near-miss" shot at an absolute balanced symmetry between expansion and recollapse[!]. The nearness of the miss enables the most efficient means for the ongoing effort of the universe toward absolute thermal equilibrium, which indicates that a perfectly symmetrical balance is still the ultimate destination or "goal", so it should come as no surprise to us that ecosystematic balances are also the most efficient means for the even dissemination of energy.
It is very important that we realize that we can use this as empirical evidence that we were brought into existence from the practical necessity of the physics of our universe[!], since it most certainly is observationally supported that we humans have evolved to become key players in this thermodynamic process, because humans have evolved to a point where high-energy physics enables us to have a significant and direct evolutionary impact on the symmetry of the universe.
The principle most certainly does not anywhere imply that it is confined to our planet either. Quite to the contrary, the universal physics necessarily applies to the whole universe, so, when given "good practical reason" for us to be here, it is much more probable that intelligent life will appear somewhere on most every similarly constructed banded spiral galaxy in the universe, for the same good reason that it appears on at least one band of our own galaxy, since the mentioned "good practical reason" for us to be here applies universally. It does, however, become more unlikely for this phenomenon to have occured by way of purely random chance events, as more and more of these life friendly ecosystematic balances are discovered, while large scale structures continue to form in our universe in direct opposition to the copernican cosmological principle as it applies to the time domain, given the over-riding expansive tendency of our universe.
This also applies to human evolutionary theory if good reason can be established for why the physics of the universe just so happens to be balanced ecosystematically to require intelligent life, because that would connect the biocentric principle to the mechanisms that enable human evolution, which means that the physics of the universe is guiding human evolution in order to bring about whatever special properties that humans posess that would give them some unique value to the thermodynamic process of the expanding universe.
In fact, the odds for life in our universe are astronomically off-the-charts-improbable if you don't project the existence of universes and conditions that " might " exist beyond what is actually observed. That's because probabilities theory doesn't apply if there is only one possible universe because this means that the universe is "pre-constrained" so that the forces inherently isolate almost exactly between a specific range of possibilites that just so happen to be absolutely necessary to "life as we know it". This, anthropic-bias, is the basis for the physics of the anthropic principle, which, in of itself, is just a circular reasoned tautology or a truism, but the really unique thing about this is the precarious nature with which it occurs.
This is actually very important, but it is also something that is quite often conveniently overlooked by those using theoretical rationale when debating against the anthropic principle, because all of the anthropic, or cosmic coincidences are ecosystematically balanced so that the conditions for "life as we know it" would accelerate far away from anyones wildest dreams for life if even the slightest amount of drift were to occur. For a popular example of how this applies to one cosmic coincidence, the big bang resulted in a predominant inclination toward expansion that is near exactly counterbalanced by the opposite effect of gravity, and so the universe is near-perfectly flat, which is critical to support life. If either tendency was any less or greater, then universal expansion would have either, accelerated rapidly far beyond the conditions that are necessary for life before it had time to evolve, or it would have recollapsed in on itself long before star formation enabled carbon-based life to exist.
The commonly missed importance of this is that any change would cause the universe to run drastically far away from anyone's wildest dreams for life, and so the argument that different forms of life might have evolved under different circumstances doesn't hold practical water any more than the lame idea of "alien manipulation" of ID theory does, as arguments against specialness include the same kind of"what-if things are different elsewhere" stuff that attempts to explain-away the obvious strangeness of the anthropic coincidences with speculative possibilities that aren't actually evidenced... just like ID theory.
Another very important point has to do with the range of potential that is present with every anthropic coincidence, because, in every case, life appears almost exactly between this relevant spectrum of potential, like Earth exists "betweeen" Venus and Mars, our closet potential life-bearing sister-planets that almost made it, but didn't quite make the grade. This is what the so-called, "fine-tuning" is about, but there isn't any "tuning" to it, the "range" or spectrum of potential derives a precariously necessary ecosytematic balance, in every case. Robert Dicke realized that a even a slight change in these relationships would cause them to run drastically away from the conditions for life. For example, stars of the right type for sustaining life supportable planets only can occur during a certain range of ages for the universe, but this must also work in conjuction with the fact that stars of the right type can only can form for a narrow range of values of the gravitational constant.
This point is important becauses you can use it to predict stuff like Robert Dicke did. For example, these constraints derive where else might life be likely to appear in our universe, because it points out that life would be more probable on the bands of spiral galaxies that are about the same age as ours, and looking in the older or newer formations is more probably just a waste of time, so in every case, you should look approximately between whatever relative extremes for the balance or plane of life.
The anthropic principle has a significant impact on cosmology if it is based on the observed reality, rather than "many-worlds", and "quantum uncertainty", interpretations, because our universe is specially constrained if our universe is the only possible result of our big bang. This significance is real if Stephen Hawking was right when he introduced his latest revision to our world-view this past summer in Dublin, Ireland, as he proclaimed from Newton's mobile chair that his new theory proves information is never truly lost from our universe if a true event horizon never forms. He then apologized to sci.fi writers for the fact that there can be no baby universes created from black holes because of this.
The more complex the structure the more effective is the energy dissemination. Populations are better in this respect than single individuals; ecosystems even more so, and most effective of all -- so far -- are human high-tech societies.
Thus, goes the argument, the second law of thermodynamics is not contrary to the existence of life; rather, it is the cause of life. That law drives evolution to higher levels of complexity and to more sophisticated societies and technologies for the sole purpose of disseminating energy gradients.
More on this can be found in the following article, and the author, Arne Jernelov, is professor of environmental biochemistry, an honorary scholar and former director of the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna and a UN expert on environmental catastrophes:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/09/30/2003204990
The following is yet another more universal and independent derivation of this theory, including a clarification of the anthropic principle, and a valid natural design hypothesis, which should blast the whole ID argument right out of the ball-park, while cutting right down the middle of the debate. This does not please the ideologically biased, but the preferred theory doesn't care:
The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (in its current form), simply notes that any valid theory of the universe must be consistent with our existence as carbon-based human beings at this particular time and place in the universe, as this was originally derived by Robert Dicke from Dirac's Large Numbers Hypothesis.
That's the hard physics data point, but the biggest problem of attaching science to the Anthropic Principle of the past was that it did not include proper consideration for the human potential for increasing the entropy of the universe. If you read the above linked articles, then it is quite easy to see how its inclusion changes things. Life obeys the second law by way of what is known of as an "emergence" of capabilities that enable it to more efficiently pay the growing entropy debt that comes with maintaining the high degree of complexity that is necessary to life's organization. Human significance to the expansion process must depend on the comparitive degree of human-effect, as well as its potential for future contributions, based on the historic trend. This effect is arguably significant on many levels, but humans, like Black Holes and Supernovae, are also capable of isolating the release of high-energy particles in a manner so as to produce real particles from the negative energy of the vacuum. This is no small feat as it applies to the human potential for high-energy entropic contributions, but it's only a drop in the bucket if the principle is actually "biocentric".
It is no coincidence that human capability for increasing entropy has increased by "leaps" throughout the timeline of man's history on Earth, and we have for some time now been able to produce temperatures in the laboratory that exceed those on the surface of our own Sun. This ranks the human-system right up there with the previous two mentioned only known competitors, in terms of our potential for affecting the symmetry of the universe, and this alone makes the human-system comparatively unique.
The Entropic Anthropic Cosmological Principle
Our existence in this expanding universe must necessarily be required by the Principle of Least Action on a grand scale, because local increases in order and complexity necessarily create an increasing global-scale entropic debt that can only be satisfied by the emergence of properties that will magnify entropic efficiency in a universe that has an increasing negative pressure component.
The principle of least action notes that changes in nature occur via the least quantity of action possible, and so local changes that run contrary to the overriding expansive tendency must still somehow qualify as the least amount of work necessary in the effort toward grand scale thermal equilibrium, since every change in nature increases the entropy of an expanding universe, per the second law of thermodynamics.
This includes the complex human entropy potential, because order inducing events run contrary to the overriding expansive tendency of the universe, which necessarily compounds the system's potential for disorder, in terms of its ability to satisfy this ever increasing need. The magnified human potential for enhancing the entropic process is expressed by emergent capabilities for increasing the entropy of the universe more efficiently than would normally be the case without intelligent life, and the same can be said of everything from, "dung beetles" to "black holes" with varying degrees of natural preference to their continued survival.
The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of our expanding universe always increases, per the arrow of time, and it is a fact that the entropy of complex systems is greater than the sum of the entropies of the individual systems. In other words, open complex systems exist in opposition to the overriding momentum of our expanding universe by way of the emergence of a magnification in the system's ability to expedite the effort toward grand-scale thermal equilibrium. The system can only be maintained if it can do its share of the work to meet the increasing demand or "need" that comes with expansion, which requires that the entropy of the universe must always increase. Life has thus far managed to perpetuate itself against this increasingly strenghtening destructive force, via a proportional increase in its total contribution to the entropy of the universe, with a lot of help from the surrounding, "friendly" environment.
This means that the second law of thermodynamics requires carbon-based human beings, (in terms of activation energy), as the favored method for maximizing entropic efficiency within the constraints of inherent asymmetries, by way of the same decouplings that manifest every other force in our expanding universe.
We humans represent the least ultimate path of action in the evolution of the universe, given the obstacle of inherent imperfections in the energy at the moment of the "near" cosmic singularity, which caused the effect of the big bang to occur over time, since the asymmetries made the affect less-than-perfect.
The observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable, but must necessarily take on values where carbon-based life can evolve at a specific period in the history of the universe as an integral contributor to the evolutionary process of the expanding universe.
It's a self-evident no-brainer that the human-system exhibits the capability for processing all forms of matter in nature in the universal effort toward grand scale thermodynamic equilibrium. This inherent tendency indicates that the humans may be more generally connected to the universal than any other system, as this is evidenced by our actions.
Our expanding universe must have specific properties that require life to develop within it at a stage in history that is critical to the thermodynamic process of our universe, as this is supported by our unmatched ability to directly affect the symmetry of the universe.
This justifies the exceedingly high degree of precision that brings the universal constants to bear on a vast number of necessary and highly precise balances that lie near exactly between a relevant range of conditions that are almost conducive to life.
Humans have the highly specialized ability to process critical forms of matter, like, antimatter, which is specific and necessary to the universal effort toward pure and perfect symmetry. This is a clear implication that the universe "needs" us for a very special purpose. The fact that very little matter needs to be formed to account for expansion, roughly a few hundred atoms of hydrogen per galaxy each year, it is not a problem of the theory that the direct human contribution isn't spectacular. The theory removes the need for the universe to have a beginning, while defining a "near"-static cosmology, that doesn't violate conservation of mass.
The Strong Argument notes that the more specific is the need, the more specialized must be the tool, the more isolated must be the forces.
But the human system as a whole also exhibits this tendency more generally or universally, as well:
The Weak Entropic Anthropic logic notes that the more general is the need, the less specialized can be the tool, the more "friendly" must be the environment.
The landscape is equally important to our survival and so the energy that we can expend in the direction of survival must be readily expendable. This means that the cooperative environment enables entropy to increase within the limits of practical human effort, and this necessarily entails that carbon-based life must be environmentally favored as a means to raise the energy level enough to breach the relevant environmental constraints in order that entropy may continue to increase by way of the next most difficult path of entropic action.
Humans are historically proven to have the ability to do this, and that ability defines a thermodynamic effect that enables the preferred system to leap to higher orders of entropic efficiency. This is quite plainly proven if humans did this when they evolved from apes to the 'fire breathing monsters' that they are today, which indicates that asymmetries, (imperfections), are carried perpetually forth to higher orders by the second law in the impossible effort toward idealistically pure symmetry. That means that there is a special link between the evolution of humans, and the evolution of the universe. The link defines purposeful design in nature, which comes about as a result of the higher-level universal need for our presence here.
The assertion is then further supported by the many cosmic coincidences that must be intricately linked, refined and balanced, in order to enable life to exist in our universe, and the idea can be extended to define a "Biocentric Principle", where the normal evolution of the universe produced countless opportunities for life to evolve on the bands of spiral galaxies that evolved at about the same time in the history of the expanding universe.
Evolutionary theory predicts that asymmetries, (in the form of inherent traits or characteristics), are carried perpetually forth by way of comparitively rapid leaps in entropic efficiency. These leaps occur in order to satisfy a higher application of the second law of thermodynamics, which, on a universal scale, enables entropy to continue to increase, indefinitely, per the physics on this website.
Weak Entropic Anthropic Principle:
Strong Entropic Anthropic Principle:
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Schneider, Eric D. and James J. Kay, 1994. "Life as a manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics." Mathematical and Computer Modelling 19(6-8): 25-48.
http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/u/jjkay/pubs/Life_as/lifeas.pdf
Schneider, E.D, Kay, J.J., 1994 "Complexity and Thermodynamics: Towards a New Ecology", Futures 24 (6) pp.626-647, August 1994
Schneider, E.D, Kay, J.J., 1995, "Order from Disorder: The Thermodynamics of Complexity in Biology", in Michael P. Murphy, Luke A.J. O'Neill (ed), "What is Life: The Next Fifty Years. Reflections on the Future of Biology", Cambridge University Press, pp. 161-172
Kay. J. 2000. "Ecosystems as Self-organizing Holarchic Open Systems : Narratives and the Second Law of Thermodynamics" in Sven Erik Jorgensen, Felix Muller (eds), Handbook of Ecosystems Theories and Management, CRC Press - Lewis Publishers. pp 135-160
Fraser, R., Kay, J.J., 2002. "Exergy Analysis of Eco-Systems: Establishing a Role for the Thermal Remote Sensing" in D. Quattrochi and J. Luvall (eds) Thermal Remote sensing in Land Surface Processes, Taylor & Francis Publishers (UPDATED 1 August 2001)
Kay, J.J., 1991. "A Non-equilibrium Thermodynamic Framework for Discussing Ecosystem Integrity", Environmental Management, Vol 15, No.4, pp.483-495
Kay, J.J., Schneider, E.D., 1992. "Thermodynamics and Measures of Ecosystem Integrity" in Ecological Indicators, Volume 1, D.H. McKenzie, D.E. Hyatt, V.J. Mc Donald (eds.), Proceedings of the International Symposium on Ecological Indicators, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Elsevier, pp.159-182.
Kay. J., Regier, H., 1999. "An Ecosystem Approach to Erie's Ecology" in M. Munawar, T.Edsall, I.F. Munawar, (eds), International Symposium. The State of Lake Erie (SOLE) - Past, Present and Future. A tribute to Drs. Joe Leach & Henry Regier, Backhuys Academic Publishers, Netherlands, pp.511-533
Kay, J, Allen, T., Fraser, R., Luvall, J., Ulanowicz, R., 2001. "Can we use energy based indicators to characterize and measure the status of ecosystems, human, disturbed and natural?" in in Ulgiati, S., Brown, M.T., Giampietro, M., Herendeen, R., Mayumi, K., (eds) Proceedings of the international workshop: Advances in Energy Studies: exploring supplies, constraints and strategies, Porto Venere, Italy, 23-27 May, 2000 pp 121-133.
Kay, J., 2002, "On Complexity Theory, Exergy and Industrial Ecology: Some Implications for Construction Ecology" in Kibert, C., Sendzimir, J. (eds), Guy, B., Construction Ecology: Nature as a Basis for Green Buildings, Spon Press, pp.72-107.
Kay, J.J., 1984 Self-Organization in Living systems, Ph.D. Thesis, Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 458p.
The Physics Behind the Large Number Coincidences
Anthropic interpretation of quantum theory (2004)
Big Bang riddles and their revelations
The Anthropic Cosmological Principle
John D. Barrow,Frank J. Tipler; Oxford University Press - ISBN: 0192821474
Eliminating the `flatness problem' with the use of Type Ia supernova data
Arthur D. Chernin; arxiv.org/astro-ph/0112158
Anthropic Bias and Observational Selection Effects
Scott Funkhouser; arxiv.org/abs/physics/0502049
Brandon Carter; arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0403008
Joao Magueijo, Kim Baskerville; arxiv.org/astro-ph/9905393, published in the millennium issue of Phil.Trans. of the Royal Society
