Thursday, June 7, 2012

Anthropic principle and Theology

Well, here we go...

Sir Fred Hoyle's solution to cosmic carbon production has its simple roots in the human experience. We exist, our bodies have plenty of carbon, so carbon exists, it must somehow be produced...

The anthropic principle brings scientists to the realm of Theology and not just Philosophy. Accordingly, we again note that what I call Astrotheology (Space theology) is actually a higher level term for various academic branches of research and theoretical thinking all examining or including notions on the impact of our expanding knowledge of the cosmos on Philosophy and Theology.

Here is a short description of what is the anthropic principle referred to in the case of Sir Fred Hoyle explaining carbon production and nuclear synthesis. Following it are some researches about the principle, about Intelligent Design ID and some other universal things - including Omega principle about the resurrection of the dead [sic!].


Anthropic principle
In astrophysics and cosmology, the anthropic principle is the philosophical consideration that observations of the physical Universe must be compatible with the conscious life that observes it. Some proponents of the anthropic principle reason that it explains why the Universe has the age and the fundamental physical constants necessary to accommodate conscious life. As a result, they believe that the fact is unremarkable that the universe's fundamental constants happen to fall within the narrow range thought to be compatible with life.

The strong anthropic principle (SAP) as explained by Barrow and Tipler (see variants) states that this is all the case because the Universe is compelled, in some sense, for conscious life to eventually emerge.

Douglas Adams [The Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy] used the metaphor of a living puddle examining its own shape, since, to those living creatures, the universe may appear to fit them perfectly (while in fact, they simply fit the universe perfectly).

Critics of the SAP argue in favor of a weak anthropic principle (WAP) similar to the one defined by Brandon Carter, which states that the universe's ostensible fine tuning is the result of selection bias: i.e., only in a universe capable of eventually supporting life will there be living beings capable of observing any such fine tuning, while a universe less compatible with life will go unbeheld.
wikipedia


SAP
John D. Barrow receiving Temmpleton Price 2006
+Plus
John David Barrow FRS (born 29 November 1952, London) is an English cosmologist, theoretical physicist, and mathematician. Fellow of the Royal Society. He is currently Research Professor of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge. Barrow is also a writer of popular science and an amateur playwright.
  • Cosmic Imagery: Key Images in the History of Science.  
  • New Theories of Everything.  
  • Between Inner Space and Outer Space: Essays on the Science, Art, and Philosophy of the Origin of the Universe
  • Impossibility: Limits of Science and the Science of Limits.  
  • Material Content of the Universe
  • Pi in the Sky: Counting, Thinking, and Being
  • Science and Ultimate Reality: Quantum Theory, Cosmology and Complexity
  • Barrow, John D.; Tipler, Frank J. (19 May 1988). The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. foreword by John A. Wheeler. Oxford: Oxford University Press.   
  • The Artful Universe: The Cosmic Source of Human Creativity
  • The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas about the Origins of the Universe
  • The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Endless
  • The Left Hand of Creation: The Origin and Evolution of the Expanding Universe
  • The Origin of the Universe: To the Edge of Space and Time
  • The Universe That Discovered Itself
  • The World Within the World
  • Theories of Everything: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation
  • The Constants of Nature: The Numbers that Encode the Deepest Secrets of the Universe
  • 100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know.
wikipedia


Frank J. Tipler ISCID
Frank Jennings Tipler (born February 1, 1947 in Andalusia, Alabama) is a mathematical physicist and cosmologist, holding a joint appointment in the Departments of Mathematics and Physics at Tulane University. Tipler has authored books and papers on the Omega Point, which he claims is a mechanism for the resurrection of the dead. It has been labeled as pseudoscience by some. Tipler is a fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design, a society advocating intelligent design.
Books:
  • Frank J. Tipler; John D. Barrow (1986). The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Oxford University Press. 
  • Frank J. Tipler (1994). The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead. New York: Doubleday.  
  • Frank J. Tipler (2007). The Physics of Christianity. New York: Doubleday.  
Articles:
  • Frank J. Tipler (2003). "Intelligent life in cosmology". International Journal of Astrobiology 2 (2): 141–48.  
  • Frank J. Tipler (2005). "The Star of Bethlehem: A Type Ia/Ic Supernova in the Andromeda Galaxy?". The Observatory 125: 168–74.  
  • Frank J. Tipler (2007). "Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a Theory of Everything". Reports on Progress in Physics 68 (4): 897–964.
wikipedia



WAP
Brandon Carter
wikimedia

Brandon Carter, FRS (born 1942) is an Australian theoretical physicist, best known for his work on the properties of black holes and for being the first to name and employ the anthropic principle in its contemporary form. He is a researcher at the Meudon campus of the Laboratoire Univers et Théories, part of the CNRS. Fellow of the Royal Society. (home page)

He studied at Cambridge under Dennis Sciama. He found the exact solution of the geodesic equations for the Kerr/Newman electrovacuum solution, and the maximal analytic extension of this solution. In the process, he discovered the extraordinary fourth constant of motion and the Killing–Yano tensor.

Together with Werner Israel and Stephen Hawking, he proved the no-hair theorem in general relativity, stating that all stationary black holes are completely characterized by mass, charge, and angular momentum. More recently, Carter, Chachoua, and Chamel (2005) have formulated a relativistic theory of elastic deformations in neutron stars.
  • Carter, B. (1968). "Global structure of the Kerr family of gravitational fields". Phys. Rev. 174 (5): 1559–1571. 
  • Carter, B. (1968). "Hamilton-Jacobi and Schrödinger separable solutions of Einstein's equations". Commun. Math. Phys. 10 (4): 280–310.
  • Carter, B. (1970). "An axisymmetric black hole has only two degrees of freedom". Phys. Rev. Lett. 26 (6): 331–333.  
  • Carter, B.; & Hartle, J. B. (Editors) (1987). Gravitation in astrophysics, Cargese, 1986. New York: Plenum Press.  
  • Carter, B.; & Chachoua, Elie; & Chamel, Nicolas (2006). "Covariant Newtonian and Relativistic dynamics of (magneto)-elastic solid model for neutron star crust". General Relativity and Gravitation 38: 83–119. 

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