Can (or How) Anthropic Principle be made into a scientific theory?

Question

Anthropic Principle says

physical Universe must be compatible with the conscious life that observes it.

I thought it is just philosophy mumbo-jumbo and it's not physics.

But I could be wrong; I wonder whether is it possible to formulate it into a specific scientific theory that is falsifiable, at least in principle?

The argument that "the theory is true because we are here; our existence proves the theory and if we are not here, the theory is disproved" is extremely unsatisfying, mainly because it can be formulated to support any kind of philosophical mumbo-jumbo.

Answer 1

The statement you quote is a truism, so not much science in it. There are however two ways you can extract science from the anthropic principle.

One is that it can give you non-trivial constraints on parameters in current theories. In most cases the existence of intelligent life itself is too much of a detail that enters the argument. It's more that you'd be saying we have observed that the universe is such that e.g. carbon exists in such and such an abundance, and this is only possible if parameter x is in some specific range, so you've constrained your parameter. That constraint might be more or less interesting, but nothing unscientific about this.

Second one is that you might try to come up with a theory in which the "evolution of life" is well-defined in scientific terms, such that you can argue there's some optimization principle going on which results in some specific theory, that being the one we observe. However, there's some arguments that our standard model might not be the only one supporting the evolution of life (Google for: Weakless Universe). In any case, taking this road is going to involve a lot more than only physics because first you have to find a way to define "life" in mathematical terms.

Answer 2

The anthropic principle (at least in it's weak form) is neither philosophy nor science. It is simply a statement about the admissibility of evidence.

Any precondition to an observation is not evidence about the whatever you are observing.

Duh!

Answer 3

Step 1 is to understand the exact laws of our universe, back to the big bang. We hope and expect that we will eventually end up with some mathematical equations or structures that are very constraining: Basically, that there will be only one simple self-consistent theory that can possibly be the laws of physics of the universe (or multiverse). Of course, people expect that this theory is string theory: They expect that any plausible self-consistent theory that includes general relativity and QFT is either string theory or something mathematically equivalent to string theory.

Step 2, you extrapolate these laws to learn about unobservable things, including whether there are other universes besides our own. In what we understand of string theory so far, it seems that, yes there have to be many universes, each with different fundamental constants. (Our universe had better be one of the possibilities of course!)

Step 3A, IF it is possible to find a sensible measure of the frequency in which any given type of universe appears: In principle, it is possible to estimate the expected number of intelligent life-forms in each universe. Then by doing a weighted average you can get a probability distribution of what the value of each parameter would be for a randomly-selected intelligent life-form. Then we can see where we fit in this distribution. If we are within a couple standard deviations of the center, good. If we're many standard deviations away, out in the tail, it counts against the likelihood of these laws of physics. I mean, if we have a Bayesian analysis to decide "what are the laws of physics", the finding that our universe is a real outlier among universes with intelligent life would lower our judged likelihood that string theory is the correct one. (Maybe it is still correct, because the other alternatives to string theory, if any, require even more unlikely coincidences.)

Step 3B, IF it is NOT possible to find a sensible measure of the frequency in which any given type of universe appears ("there are infinitely many of each so they don't have a well-defined ratio"): Then the best we can do is show that our universe is one of the possibilities. We will never be able to explain why we are in one mathematically-allowed life-supporting universe rather than another, because there is no explanation.

The overwhelming majority of the "scientific theory" in the anthropic principle comes in steps 1 and 2. Step 3 is a research program to (possibly) get some "predictions" which we can compare to reality, which adds some extra information and falsifiability to the theory. That's all good, but still, there is vastly more information and falsifiability in step 1 than in step 3. That's why, since Step 1 is still very far from complete, people's time is by and large better spent working on Step 1 rather than Step 3.

Answer 4

I don't think the argument can be stated as "The theory is true because we are here; our existence proves the theory and if we are not here, the theory is disproved" because, as far as I know, the anthropic principle is not a statement about the truth of something. Instead, is a statement regarding the necessary conditions to produce intelligent life aware of certain features of its environment. The specifics are given depending on which anthropic principle you are talking about.

Obviously the anthropic principle is not a theorem or a law or anything of that sort, but it adds what the common sense would add: In case you're dealing in physics with something that is restricted by a result you're expecting to obtain (for example, a process that permits the creation of life), then by avoiding solutions not allowing this final result, you're implicitly using the anthropic principle. However, I would find hard to argue that we actually need a fancy name for this kind of situation.

Answer 5

Anthropic reasoning is as good a scientific method as any others, in that it can produce experimentally testable predictions.

For instance it has predictions (For historical reasons these are mostly post-dictions I think) of the ranges of certain cosmological constants. Anthropic reasoning would say that these number must be within certain ranges because otherwise the universe would not be capable of supporting life, but we observe life so the constants must lie within ranges capable of supporting life.

So the basic argument goes like this "We know A is impossible without B, but we know A is true, therefore B is true", which is perfectly valid reasoning.

(A=>B and A) => B

Edit: Could downvoters please state what they dont understand?

This is the definition of a scientific method I use:
-Take observation, in this case that life exist.
-Use a formal system to derive testable predictions based on observation:
Done as follows: Life is observed to exist, therefore physical constants must be within certain ranges.
-Perform experimental test of prediction:
Constants observed to lie within predicted values.

Observation fits prediction, the definition of a succesfull scientific theory.

Answer 6

From what I gathered from Wikipedia, the Anthropic principle has been used to explain the age of the universe and values of physical constants. The argument is that if the values of physical constants changed by a tiny amount, this would have huge consequence of life as we know it. Hence the perfect values for the constants. But in a recent paper Don Page has argued that the value of cosmological constant is a bit larger. If it had been smaller and negative the universe would have had better conditions to support life (it would increase galaxy and star formation rates, thereby increasing the chance of life supporting environments). I think this flies directly in the face of the Anthropic Principle.

Further, we have studied conscious life only on earth. There is no conclusive evidence to support that life elsewhere in the universe (if it existed) would have the same characteristics as that seen on earth.

Also see the article on arXiv blog: http://www.technologyreview.in/blog/arxiv/26276/