Is the Anthropic Principle Enough?
The Anthropic Principle is compelling enough for us to wonder if it can determine the laws of physics on its own. I know of no convincing argument that it can. There is nothing in the anthropic principle which explains why so many of the most elegant discoveries of mathematics are so important in physics. There is nothing to explain why there is so much symmetry in physics, or why the elegant principle of least action is important or even why the laws of physics should be the same in one place as they are in another. You might try to argue that the laws of physics have to take a certain form because otherwise they would be impossible to understand. I don’t buy it! I am convinced that a suitable mathematical system, perhaps even something as simple as a cellular automata, can include sufficient complexity that intelligent life would evolve within it. There must be a huge variety of possible forms the laws of physics could have taken and there must be many in which life evolves. In the c
