Cosmologic philosophy: 5 articles on fine tuning (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, November 24, 2016, 13:40 (2921 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: How the universe exists on a knife edge of forces is explored:https://www.newscientist.com/round-up/cosmic-coincidences

QUOTE: The more we look at the universe, the stranger it appears. From the geometry of space-time to the masses of the elementary particles, its properties are finely tuned to allow life to exist.

Life exists, and therefore all the properties for life exist. That is self-evident. But nobody knows the nature or the extent of the universe. We already know that it contains billions of solar systems. It may even extend to infinity, with an infinity of solar systems and galaxies, and there may be other forms of life under different conditions, or there may be no other life because in all this vastness just one tiny blob happened to strike lucky? Then we would have to say that the properties of the rest of the universe are differently tuned for different forms of life, or not tuned at all for life or for anything else but a constant coming and going of mindless matter. We are all groping in the dark here. But yes, the properties of our particular blob are such that life exists.

QUOTE: The very early universe was dominated by dark matter. “At that time, dark matter density was 95 orders of magnitude larger than the density of dark energy,” says Nicolao Fornengo at the University of Turin, Italy.

We don’t even know what dark matter is. You might as well say the universe was dominated by something or the other. How the heck can anyone know that the density of something or the other was 95 orders of magnitude greater than the density of another something or the other? I can’t help feeling that in the next fifty, hundred, thousand years, scientists will have come up with very different observations and explanations.

QUOTE: At the heart of that picture is the cosmological principle, which says that the universe appears the same on the largest scales no matter where you happen to be looking. This is what you’d expect in the aftermath of an explosion like our big bang, with all the constituents winding up mixed together in a randomised, homogeneous soup. The reality, it seemed, wasn’t like that – and despite steadily improving measurements, the axis has stubbornly refused to vanish.

The big bang, if it happened, was – we are told – NOT an explosion. How does anyone know what to expect after an event which – assuming it ever took place – nobody has ever experienced? In all this unfathomable vastness, who knows what else is going on and has gone on and could go on?

David’s comment: the universe sure looks designed to me. And to you?

I can’t see the universe. Nobody can. We can only see part of it. But I agree, the part that affects us directly does look designed. On the other hand, billions of solar systems coming and going to no apparent purpose look pretty un-designed. It’s the same old monkey on a typewriter quandary. Given possible eternity and infinity, maybe anything is possible, and maybe it isn’t. Let’s just be mighty thankful that we are the lucky ones, no matter how it all happened.