The Anthropic Principle and Its Epistemological Status in Modern Physical Cosmology

Author(s):  
Bernulf Kanitscheider
2015 ◽  
pp. 123-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Koshovets ◽  
T. Varkhotov

The paper considers the analogy of theoretical modeling and thought experiment in economics. The authors provide historical and epistemological analysis of thought experiments and their relations to the material experiments in natural science. They conclude that thought experiments as instruments are used both in physics and in economics, but in radically different ways. In the natural science, a thought experiment is tightly connected to the material experimentation, while in economics it is used in isolation. Material experiments serve as a means to demonstrate the reality, while thought experiments cannot be a full-fledged instrument of studying the reality. Rather, they constitute the instrument of structuring the field of inquiry.


2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (28) ◽  
pp. 1550139
Author(s):  
Keji Shen ◽  
Qiang Zhang ◽  
Xin-He Meng

Counting galaxy number density with wide range sky surveys has been well adopted in researches focusing on revealing evolution pattern of different types of galaxies. As understood intuitively the astrophysics environment physics is intimately affected by cosmology priors with theoretical estimation or vice versa, or simply stating that the astrophysics effect couples the corresponding cosmology observations or the way backwards. In this paper, we try to quantify the influence on galaxy number density prediction at faint luminosity limit from the uncertainties in cosmology, and how much the uncertainties blur the detection of galaxy evolution, with the hope that this trying may indeed help for precise and physical cosmology study in near future or vice versa.


2004 ◽  
Vol 19 (10) ◽  
pp. 727-743 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. C. W. DAVIES

Recent advances in string theory and inflationary cosmology have led to a surge of interest in the possible existence of an ensemble of cosmic regions, or "universes", among the members of which key physical parameters, such as the masses of elementary particles and the coupling constants, might assume different values. The observed values in our cosmic region are then attributed to an observer selection effect (the so-called anthropic principle). The assemblage of universes has been dubbed "the multiverse". In this paper we review the multiverse concept and the criticisms that have been advanced against it on both scientific and philosophical grounds.


1997 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-90
Author(s):  
Karl W. Giberson ◽  

The Anthropic Principle suggests that the universe may have been designed for human life. This anthropocentric, anti-Copernican, notion elicits a variety of responses from scientists, including some elaborate attempts to invalidate it by trying to show that there may be an infinity of alternative universes. These attempts may be challenged as unreasonably speculative and presumptive. What emerges is the suggestion that cosmology may at last be in possession of some raw material for a postmodern creation myth. If the Anthropic Principle can be integrated with biological explanations of human origins, and the result joined to the traditional Biblical Creation story, what emerges is a possible recovery of a religiously traditional, yet scientifically coherent, creation story for our generation.


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