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AKPhil: Arbeitskreis Philosophie der Physik

AKPhil 2: Cosmology 2

AKPhil 2.2: Talk

Tuesday, March 6, 2007, 15:45–16:15, KIP SR 3.401

Old Temptation in New Outfit: The Anthropic Cosmological Principle and the Teleological Tradition — •Michael Stöltzner — IZWT, Universität Wuppertal, Gaußstr. 20, D-42119 Wuppertal

Looking at the parameters that determine the characteristics of our Universe, cosmologists keep wondering why minute variations in these values yield so markedly different scenarios. For those, who eschew multiverse cosmology, the anthropic principle (AP) seems to provide an explanation: these values are such because they are, or even must be, consistent with the existence of human observers. The concrete form of the AP ranges from a truism of confirmation theory to a metaphysical assumption comparable to design arguments. In the latter form, so I argue, the AP simply rehearses a type of teleological thinking that has been with us since the classical debates between Isaac Newton and Richard Bentley. It implicitly assumes that a physical theory is categorical, that is, leaves no further freedom in selecting physical models once its basic laws are in place. But almost all physical theories fall short of this ideal. Model selection is guided by the likelihood of empirical data given a certain assumption. It is precisely at this point where the cosmological AP has emerged in the 1970s. I argue that in this form the AP makes sense as an explanatory complement but it cannot be elevated to the general level it purportedly dwells on.