The Anthropic Question


9.1 Issue G: The anthropic question: Fine tuning for life
One of the most profound fundamental issues in cosmology is the Anthropic question: why does the Universe have the very special nature required in order that life can exist?  The point is that a great deal of “fine tuning” is required in order that life be possible.  There are many relationships embedded in physical laws that are not explained by physics, but are required for life to be possible; in particular various fundamental constants are highly constrained in their values if life as we know it is to exist:

Ellis goes on to quote Martin Rees.

A universe hospitable to life—what we might call a biophilic universe—has to be special in many ways … Many recipes would lead to stillborn universes with no atoms, no chemistry, and no planets; or to universes too short lived or too empty to evolve beyond sterile uniformity.

Physics does not tell us anything (yet) about why the fundamental constants and other parameters have the values they do.  These parameters include, for example, the speed of light, the Planck constant, the four fundamental forces and their relative strengths, the mass ratio of the proton and the electron, the fine-structure constant, the cosmological density parameter, Ωtot, relative to the critical density, and so on.  And, why are there four fundamental forces?  Why not five?  Or three?

Also, why do we live in a universe with three spatial dimensions and one time dimension?  Others are possible—even universes with two or more time dimensions.

But it appears that only three spatial dimensions and one time dimension is conducive to life (at least life as we know it), as shown in the diagram above (Whittle 2008).

In fact, altering almost any of the parameters would lead to a sterile universe and we could not exist.  Is the universe fine-tuned for our existence?

Let’s assume for the moment it is.  Where does that lead us?

  1. As our understanding of physics advances, we will eventually understand why these parameters must have the values that they do. -or-
  2. We will eventually learn that some of these parameters could have been different, and still support the existence of life. -or-
  3. God created the universe in such a way that life could exist -or-
  4. We’re overthinking the problem.  We live in a life-supporting universe, so of course we find the parameters are specially tuned to allow life. -or-
  5. There exist many universes with different parameters and we just happen to find ourselves in one that is conducive to life. (The multiverse idea.)

#4 is the anthropic explanation, but a deeper scientific understanding will occur if we find either #1, #2, or #5 to be true.  #3 is problematic for a couple of reasons.  First of all, how was God created?  Also, deism has a long history of explaining phenomena we don’t understand (“God of the gaps”), but in time we are able to understand each phenomenon in turn as science progresses.

The anthropic explanation itself is not controversial.  What is controversial is deciding to what degree fine tuning has occurred and how to explain it.

In recent years, the multiverse idea has become more popular because, for example, if there were a billion big bangs and therefore a billion different universes created, then it should not be at all surprising that we find ourselves in  one with just the right set of parameters to allow our existence.  However, there is one big problem with the multiverse idea.  Not only do we have no physical evidence that a multiverse exists, but we may never be able to obtain evidence that a multiverse exists, due to the cosmological horizon problem1.  If physical evidence of a multiverse is not forthcoming, then in that sense it is not any better than the deistic explanation.

To decide whether or not there is only one combination of parameters that can lead to life we need to rule out all the other combinations, and that is a tall order.  Recent work in this field suggests that there is more than one combination of parameters that could create a universe that is hospitable to life (Hossenfelder 2018).

Thinking now about why our universe is here at all, it seems there are just two possibilities:

(1)  Our universe has a supernatural origin.

(2)  Our universe has a natural origin.

If our universe has a supernatural origin, then what is the origin of the supernatural entity (e.g. God)?  If, on the other hand, our universe had a natural origin (e.g. something was created out of nothing), didn’t something have to exist (laws of physics or whatever) before the universe came into existence?  If so, what created those pre-conditions?

In either case, we are facing an infinite regression.  However, we could avoid the infinite regression by stating that something has to exist outside of time, that is to say, it has no beginning and no ending.  But isn’t this just replacing one infinity with another?

Perhaps there’s another possibility.  Just as a chimpanzee cannot possibly understand quantum mechanics, could it be that human intellect is also fundamentally limited?  Are the questions in the previous two paragraphs meaningless or nonsensical in the context of some higher intelligence?

1We appear to live in a universe that is finite but very much larger than the region that is visible to us now, or ever.


Sabine Hossenfelder, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray (Basic Books, 2018).

M. J. Rees, Our Cosmic Habitat (Princeton and Oxford, 2003).

Mark Whittle, “Fine Tuning and Anthropic Arguments”, Lecture 34, Course No. 1830.  Cosmology: The History and Nature of Our Universe.  The Great Courses, 2008.  DVD.