On Gaia by Tyrrell Toby;

Author:Tyrrell, Toby;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2013-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

9.3.4. Suggested Shortcomings of the Anthropic Principle

The weak anthropic principle is considered by many to be useful in explaining why our planet, solar system, galaxy, and universe are all currently suitable for life, and why our planet has remained so for billions of years. Many think it highly pertinent. But by no means everyone. The anthropic principle has certainly not met with universal favor in the past, and is by no means universally favored now. Several major criticisms have been leveled at it, which I will now describe.

Firstly, it has been pointed out with good reason that the name itself is rather misleading. The term anthropic principle is clearly a misnomer. It is not restricted to humans, as “anthro-” implies, but instead, hypothetically at least, applies to any intelligent beings capable of pondering the mystery of their existence. The principle is concerned equally with all intelligent observers, whether human or not. A better name would be “observer selection effects.”

Secondly, it has been attacked for its associations with Intelligent Design. Stephen Jay Gould appeared to attack the anthropic principle in his essay “Mind and Supermind,”16 but in fact it is not the anthropic principle per se that he disliked. What Gould actually took objection to is (what we now know as) Intelligent Design, and the use of the anthropic principle as an argument for this. It is this one specific use of the anthropic principle that he challenged; that is to say, he disliked the use of the observation that the Earth and the universe appear to be “just right” for producing sentient life (more of which below) as a justification for arguing that there must therefore be an intelligent designer behind it all. Gould improperly conflated two arguments (the anthropic principle and Intelligent Design) and thereby condemned the anthropic principle by association. But the anthropic principle stands alone as a separate argument that need not be associated with Intelligent Design. For instance, it is used here without any such connection. In this case, therefore, Gould’s criticisms do not apply.

More contentious versions of the anthropic principle, some unsurprisingly labeled the Strong Anthropic Principle, have also been proposed. Various criticisms have been raised against these stronger variants of the anthropic principle. Again, however, because only the less controversial weak anthropic principle is being employed here, these criticisms are not relevant.

Finally, and most seriously, the anthropic principle has often been criticized for its lack of testability.17 Some have even called it nonscientific. Explaining a phenomenon in this way has been labeled a cop-out, a “just-so” explanation that immediately puts the argument beyond the reach of any further scientific investigation. Attributing the cause of a particular phenomenon to pure luck rather than to mechanism is all very well, but such an assertion is impossible or at least very difficult to test, so the criticism goes. For instance, anthropic explanations for the suitability of the physical constants in the universe attract criticism because they are obviously untestable (we cannot observe universes with different values of the fundamental constants, and we do not even know if any such exist).

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