Science Literature

This review of Paul Davies’ latest book will raise a few eyebrows. Some will think that Davies has abandoned science. Others will express their puzzlement why Davies cannot make a Design Inference. Earlier this week, I was reading Alvin Plantinga on the twin pillars of Christian Scholarship. He identifies three main contestants in the contemporary intellectual world: Christianity, Perennial Naturalism and Creative Anti-realism. The latter finds expression in Kant, Wittgenstein, existentialism, relativism and post-modernism. The reviewer's description of Davies' "more interesting" idea fits neatly into this approach. How curious to find Davies avoiding ID only to end up in the Creative Anti-realist camp!

Books and Arts: Life in the universal porridge
What were the chances that the conditions in the Universe would be just right for life?
Jim Al-Khalili reviews The Goldilocks Enigma: Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life? by Paul Davies
Nature 444, 423 (23 November 2006) | doi:10.1038/444423a

Selected excerpts:
"Davies’ first suggestion is that the ‘biofriendliness' of the Universe may be due to some as yet undiscovered 'life principle: built into the laws of physics from the very beginning, that has steered and constrained the Universe towards producing life. I find this idea hard to swallow and I don't think Davies dwells on it long enough to really make a convincing case.
"He then invites us to consider a more interesting - I hesitate to endorse it with the term 'appealing' - idea originally expounded by physicist John Wheeler. It takes one of the weirdest features of quantum mechanics and pushes it to its logical conclusion: that conscious observers bring about the universe they find themselves in by the very act of observing it, thereby dragging it out of the quantum superposition of all possible paths it could have followed. Actually, I think this is related to what supporters of the Multiverse version of quantum mechanics would argue -with the difference that, for Davies, our universe is the only one.
"The main options, then, are: first, that the Universe is a fluke; second, that it is one of many and happens to be, much like Goldilocks' porridge, just right for us; and third, that conscious observers bring the universe they inhabit into existence simply by observing it, although their teleological actions would have to reach back into the past, forcing the right conditions to be selected at the Big Bang."