Anthropics
The
Anthropic Principle and Fine Tuning Arguments
Books where I have discussed subject
The Encyclopedia of Nonbelief
To be published by Prometheus Books.
The Anthropic
Principle. Draft of my
contribution. For comment only. Do not copy or distribute. Refer to
published version when available.
New anthology:
Why
Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of
the New Creationism
Essays edited by Matt Young and Taner Edis (Rutgers University Press,
2004).
My contribution: Is
the Universe Fine
Tuned for Us? This link is to
submitted draft. Please quote or refer to published version.
To read Rocky
Mountain News column by Linda Seebach on this book, go
here.
The
Anthropic Principle.
Draft of a chapter for a book
Science, Religion,
and Society: History, Culture, and Controversy edited by
Gary Laderman
and Arri Eisen, to be
published by M.E. Sharpe.
Please refer to published version
Physics,
Cosmology and the New Creationism
Chapter for Scientists Confront
Creationism II, to be published by W.W.
Norton.
MonkeyGod
Program to generate toy universes
with
different values of four physical constants. Note the emphasis on
"toy."
This is a very simple program that makes no attempt to generate a
universe
in detail. Its main purpose is to demonstrate that long-lived stars,
which
are probably required for the evolution of life, does not depend on
some
"fine tuning" of the constants of nature but occurs for a wide range of
parameters. It also shows that the large number concidence first
proposed
by Weyl is not uncommon.
Note that the weak interaction strength has not been inlcuded as a
parameter.
Also, the effect of strong interaction strength is not included in the
calculation of astronomical quantities, although it does come in for
the
large number concidence. While the gravitational strength does not
appear
as a parameter, it is varied through variations in the proton mass. For
more details see the Philo
paper below.
To
generate your own universe, click on MonkeyGod.
Older
Articles
- "Cosmythology:
Is
the
universe fine-tuned to produce us?" Preprint of paper on
the
Anthropic Principle published in Skeptic Vo. 4 No. 2 1996.
Please
do not distribute this version and refer to the published version.
- "Intelligent Design: Humans, Cockroaches,
and
the
Laws of Physics." Paper originally submitted to Reports of
the
National Center for Science Education. This paper went through
several
revsions and finally appeared under the title "Anthropic
Design and the Laws of Physics" in RNSCE Vol. 18,
Number
3, May/June 1998, p. 812. Link to final text not available. Link
to original version on the talk.origins archive. Thanks to Brett
Vickers.
- Anthropic Design: Does the
Cosmos
Show
evidence of Purpose? Published in Skeptical Inquirer Vol.
23,
No. 4, July/August 1999.
- The Anthropic Coincidences:
A
Natural
Explanation. Published in TheSkeptical Intelligencer,
Vol. 3 Issue No. 3 July 1999.
- Natural
Explanations for the
Anthropic
Coincidences. Published in Philo, Vol. 3 No. 2, Fall-Winter 2000,
pp.
50-67. Gives a more technical explanation of the equations used in MonkeyGod.
Links
Anthropic-Principle.com.
Here you will find both popular overviews and scholarly material on
everything
related to observation selection effects, the anthropic principle,
self-locating
belief, and associated applications and paradoxes in science and
philosophy.
By Nick Bostrom, Reasearch Fellow Philosophy Faculty,
Oxford University
Why
the Universe is Just So by Craig Hogan U. Washington. Published in
Rev.
Mod. Phys. 72, 1149, 2000.
Max
Tegmark's
Parallel Universes
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