Wolfgang Hagen

"The universe was brought into existence for – man”.Some remarks on the genealogy of the Anthropic Principle. 1

With the means of observation and classification in Linne’s style, two English

naturalist almost simultaneously “invented" the theory of evolution, Charles Darwin

and Alfred Russell Wallace. This theory declares (to say it with Julia Voss), “that all

organisms differ in tiny distinguishing marks which, if hereditary, can lead to an

alteration of the species. […] Darwin [and Wallace, W.H., have] also hypothesised

that humans and animals are related to each other and share a common ancestor.” 2

In view of their common invention Wallace and Darwin were engaged in a substantial

compliance until the early 1860s.

But to the dismay of Darwin, Wallace position changed dramatically from the

mid-1860s on. Suddenly he refuses to see intellect and morality as conditioned by

"natural selection”.

“Pre-historic races [...] possess a mental organ beyond their needs. Natural

Selection could only have endowed savage man with a brain a little superior to that of

an ape, whereas he actually possesses one very little inferior to that of a

philosopher” . A "Natural Selection" could not explain why man has consciousness, 3

and certainly not how he could have gotten intellect, morality and spirituality.

Instead of selection processes, Wallace “Contributions to the Theory of Natural

Selection” contested a "will force”. “It does not seem an improbable conclusion that

[…] the whole universe, is not merely dependent on, but actually is, the will of higher

intelligences or of one Supreme Intelligence”.

Nevertheless, around 1890, Wallace had become the most prominent

promoter of Darwinism, especially with his book “Darwinism - An Exposition Of The

Theory Of Natural Selection”. Herein, in contrast with Darwins views, Wallace is

claiming, “that there are at least three stages in the development of the organic

world”. “First stage is the change from inorganic to organic”. Stage two embraces

“the introduction of sensation or consciousness, constituting the fundamental

CommunicAbility and Cosmology, Humboldt University July 7-8, 20161

Julia Voss, Charles Darwin zur Einführung, Hamburg 2008, S.92

Alfred Russel Wallace, Contributions To the Theory Of Natural Selection, New York 1871, S.3

356

distinction between the animal and vegetable kingdoms.” Finally, stage three

contains “the existence in man of a number of his most characteristic and noblest

faculties, those which raise him furthest above the brutes[…]. These faculties could

not possibly have been developed by means of the same laws which have

determined the progressive development of the organic world in general, and also of

man’s physical organism”.

Wallace concludes: “These three distinct stages of progress from the inorganic

world of matter and motion up to man, point clearly to an unseen universe to a world

of to which the world of spirit, matter is altogether subordinate. To this spiritual world

we may refer the marvellously complex forces which we know as gravitation,

cohesion, chemical force, radiant force, and electricity, without which the material

universe could not exist for a moment in its present form[…].” 4

Without doubt, in attributing gravitation and electricity to the spiritual world,

Wallace is very much bearing on the so-called "scientific spiritualism", also called

"modern spiritism," a movement around 1900, decades long operated by well-trained

mesmeric juggler gangs and a couple of clever spiritistic theoretician, with huge

success in the US, UK and central Europe from the

1840s on, later strongly influential on the upcoming

artistic Avantgarde of 1910 for example on

Kandinsky or Boccioni, well rooted in bourgeois

circles (as you can find it delineated already in Edgar

Allan Poe’s great stories) . After the US civil war, 5

these mediumistic trance media groups went to

England, featuring handsome and confidently empowered young women, working as

knocking ghosts, talking in alien tongues, communicating with dead ancestors,

supported by a bunch of pseudo scientists publishing the theory of all these

phenomena in a hundred and more of books and journals. Wallace himself writes

enthusiastically about an encounter with the medium called "Mrs. Guppy “, which he

knew her already under her name “Miss Nichol”, as, by the way, Nietzsche went to a

medium called Madame Hope, together with Lou Andreas Salome.

Wallace, Alfred Russel: Darwinism - An Exposition Of The Theory Of Natural Selection - With 4

Some Of Its Applications, London: MacMillan 1890, 475ff.

5

But in contrast to Nietzsche, who revealed the

fraudulent practices immediately, Wallace testified in

length and full seriousness “the rising of a small table

completely off the floor, […] perhaps more marvelous

was the placing of Miss N. herself on the table; for

although this always happened in the dark, yet, under

the conditions to be named, deception was impossible.” . 6

With all this, I want to point on a special climate of thinking in the scientific

world around 1900, a climate which is almost forgotten. The theory of evolution had

Wallace brought to the point, that it couldn’t explain to him the emergence of human

intelligence and mind. Considering the evolutionary theory framework, he knew to

much. There were all these new inexplicable radiations, rays and forces, and now he

witnessed these new psychical phenomena also. I’m not blaming him for being

impressed by these mediumistic woman. Their trance seances must have been

extraordinary. Furthermore, we shouldn’t forget, these phenomena, analysed by

Wilhelm Wundt, Piere Janet or William James, laid the ground for the evolution of

empirical psychology and psychoanalysis, one of the most important sciences of the

20th century.

Wallace knew to much of these things, unexplainable with evolution theory. So

he bet on otherworldliness and the ideologies of "scientific spiritualism", by which

countless other senior scientists had already been taken in (Thomas Edison,

astronomer Claude Flammarion, physicist Oliver Lodge, C. G. Jung and many

others). All these spiritualistic theories were based on the spirit paradigm of the

romantic philosophy of nature of Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling and Gustav Theodor

Fechner receiving highest endorsement among those counter-modern scientists

around 1900 like Wallace, who had been somehow distorted by the dichotomy of the

two contradicting epistemological paradigms which were still undecided in regard to

their possible physical truth.

On the one hand there was the paradigm of a spiritualised nature, allegedly

able to develop intelligent forces by and out of its own. Michael Hampe, philosopher

in Zürich, would call it: Schellings nature-creativity paradigm, bridging any difference

Wallace, Alfred R., A Defence of the Modern Spiritualism, Boston: Colby 1874, 22.6

between nature and human mind as oscillations of a natural spirit. On the other hand

we have that radical empirical paradigm of August Fresnel, William Thomson,

Hermann von Helmholtz, Heinrich Hertz, or later Einstein, Bohr or Heisenberg.

Scientifically they only accepted phenomena in nature if they are measured and

theorised by a mechanical model. Since the 1870ties, for this Fresnel-Thomson-

Helmholtz paradigm of measurement and models a disdainful buzzword had become

popular called “Modern materialism”.

“The gulf which separates the ant from Newton, the ape from Shakespeare,

the parrot from Isaiah, cannot be bridged by the struggle for existence. […] It was on

this very point that I differed from Darwin, and it is on these points that I cannot meet

the modern materialists who say that man is merely an animal and there is nothing

for him beyond the grave.” 7

Three years later, Wallace completed his scientific work in publishing “Man’s

Place in the Universe”, a reformulation of Darwinism on the grounds of a theory of

evolution of the universe. Around 1900 the Universe was still thought as being static

and infinitely extended, telescopes had been greatly

improved, stars were regarded as clustered and limited,

Herschel had discovered the double stars, from 1850 on

"Stellar photography" allowed entirely new possibilities in the

measurement of the fixed stars, the Doppler effect had

become standard since the 1860ties, Gas nebula were

detected, and Gustav Kirchhoff had developed the spectral

analysis of chemical elements, to determine the composition of the stars, and so

astrophysics arose step by step. Although only Baade and Zwicky in 1934, a

generation later, finally discovered that supernovae implosions and explosion are

responsible for incubating new types of stars in thereby creating new chemical

elements, already before 1900 Wallace had referenced to the first highly speculative

theories of stellar "polymerization" and chemical molecule formation. 8

Around 1900, in the infinite space and time of the universe Wallace can

enumerate mostly all elements that need life on Earth, as evidenced by countless

W.B.Northrop, Interview with Alfred Russel Wallace, in: The Outlook, Nr.105, 1913, S.618–7

622, S.622.

Wallace reads: Norman Lockyer, Inorganic Evolution as Studied by Spec- trum Analysis, 8

London 1900

astrophysical spectral and meteorite findings. "An overwhelming consensus of 9

opinion among the best astronomers establishes the fact

of our nearly central position in the stellar universe.” 10

Thus, the ultimate goal of Wallace's brand of Darwinism

is achieved, which reveals in fact an anti-copernican

spiritualism: man (“our”), we are repositioned in the

center of the universe.

But, in Common Sense astronomy in 1900, the universe was in no way

understood as teleological. So, Wallace had to admit, that “probably the majority of

men of science” are regarding it as a "fortunate coincidence” that "the assembly of

life factors” can only be found on "our" Earth. Wallace voted against that and opted

instead, with recourse to the spirit paradigm of the century, for the old romantically

idea of a spiritualised nature:

“And when they are shown that there are strong reasons for thinking that man

is the unique and supreme product of this vast universe, they will see no difficulty in

going a little further, and believing that the universe was actually brought into

existence for this very purpose.” 11

Seventy years later Australian theoretical physicist Brandon Carter came up

with almost the same proposition:

“the 'strong' anthropic principle stating that the

Universe (and hence the fundamental parameters on

which it depends) must be such as to admit the

creation of observers within it at some stage. To

paraphrase Descartes, “'cogito ergo mundus talis

est’”. To translate the abbreviated latin phrase, one should say, instead of “I think,

therefore I am” - ”I think, therefore the world is such [as it is]”.

Cogito ergo mundus talis est, of course, leads us not to nature romanticism

but to an much older rhetorical figure called petitio principii, colloquial, to a begging

the question. In contrast to Descartes “Cogito ergo sum”, where the being and the

thinking of man is set up in a kind of interplay, a phrase like “I think therefore the

Wallace, Man’s Place, 185.9

31110

Ebenda, S.319f.11

world is such” terms the precondition of the Cogito as its result, because, obviously,

there is no thinking without living in a world or a universe. Michael Hampe puts it this

way:

“If we assume that, from nature, beings with

complex nervous systems are emerging, under

condition of certain fundamental nature-constants,

then creating a subjectivity which is able to

produce […] representation systems including

finally also the representation of nature, so it is

evident in consideration of this derivation chain that

the first assumption [beings emerging from nature etc.] could be made only by using

a system of representation.” Hampe argues this anthropic principle is simply a

circular reasoning, and that, in his view, is a further symtom of the crisis of cosmology

in general.

However, we know the birthday of this argument. In contrast to Wallace, Brandon Carter was and still is anything but an outsider in the community of astronomers. The Anthropic Principle was brought into existence on Cliffords Day February 1970, in the presence of John Wheeler, Eugene Wigner, Stephen Hawking, Bryce DeWitt and Freeman Dyson, to name

a just few of this illustrious round. Maybe one of the reasons of the striking constancy and unbelievable steadiness of this principle is due to this authoritative establishing act.

Brandon Carter added a second one, named Weak Anthropic Principle. The WAP means “that we must be prepared to take account of the fact that our location in the universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers.” What does this definition say more than “we are there

because we are there”?

To complete the row of definitions I would like to quote the standard work on the topic, written fifteen years later by the mathematical physicists and astronomers John

David Barrow and Frank Jennings Tipler. They enhanced Carters two principles with two more, the pseudo-recursive PAP “Observers are necessary to bring the Universe into being” and, at last, the so called Final Anthropic Principle, saying “Intelligent information-processing must come into existence in the Universe, and, once it comes into existence, it will never die out.”

“After all, one of the central questions is whether the anthropic principle is scientific in nature or merely a ‘philosophical curiosity’”, mathematician Bernard Carr and astrophysicist Martin Rees reckoned in 1979. Is that really a question?

Physicist Paul Davies pointed out in 1983, “the strong anthropic principle represents a radical departure from the conventional concept of scientific explanation” and “is akin to the traditional religious explanation of the world: that God made the world for mankind to inhabit.”

Malcolm Longair, “mainstream astrophysicist at Cambridge University, […] in […] 1985: ‘I dislike this theory profoundly and regard it as an absolute last resort if all other physical arguments fail. The whole essence of the argument seems to run counter to everything one aspires to achieve as a scientist.” A last resort? - of what?

Explicitly disdaining the Anthropic Principle is Heinz Pagels, executive director of the New York Academy of Sciences, accusing it of being a product of anthropocentrism, “considering it reactionary and pseudo-scientific.”

Pagels: “It is easier to convey a simple redundancy—that we can only see what we can see—than to grapple with the abstract mathematical arguments following from the unified field theories. In many respects, the anthropic principle is the lazy man’s approach to science.”

Following up to Pagels the physicians Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turock wrote in their great book about the open universe in 2007: “Science should remain based on the principle that statements have meaning only if they can be verified or refuted. Ideas whose assumptions can never be tested lie outside the realm of science.” “The long-term effect of basing theories on anthropic reasoning could be to undermine the role of science in enlightening humankind, in insisting on objectivity and proof, and in steering society away from poor decisions based on myths and fallacies”(9750,117/135)

Thanks to historian of Science Helge Kragh who did a profound survey on all that we know - although all these and many other critics are profound and clear enough, “Pagels’ prophecy of 1985, that the anthropic principle would end up as a dusty museum piece, turned out to be wrong. Quite the contrary, with eternal inflation

landscape string theory, anthropic physics became more popular and closer to scientific respectability than ever.”

“The new multiverse physics invites a different style of science where strict predictability and ordinary testability are abandoned or given low priority. Probabilistic reasoning based on the anthropic principle is an important part of the new style.”

Theoreticians like Leonard Susskind realized in the last decade that string theory comes “in virtually infinite versions, each of which “predicts” a different universe” and “all of the universes are allowed by string theory to actually exist; our observable cosmos is just a minuscule bubble in an oceanic ‘multiverse.’ Asked why we happen to live in this particular cosmos, multiverse designer [then] cite the anthropic principle, which decrees that our cosmos must have the form we observe, because otherwise we wouldn’t be here to observe it. The anthropic principle is tautology masquerading as explanation” , as science journalist John Horgan calls it.12

Regarding the physics, I don’t want to comment on this as a cultural and media historian. Generally speaking we have to understand, that the “eternal inflation is a hypothetical universe model, which is itself an outgrowth or extension of the Big Bang theory.” With this model we are entering the field of manyfold models of string 13

theories and probabilistic computer simulations, where Multiverse Physics can be one theoretical framework which presents multiple ideas about a vast array of potential universes which are actually manifest in some way.

Given the huge array of constant parameters in contemporary physics, the Anthropic Principle, tautological as it is, provides the rhetorical framework of all these probabilistic speculations to the effect that human beings or intelligent being remain where they are. Even more, in the rhetorical realm of the Final Anthropological Principle Life has engulfed the entire universe, material resources around earth are finally exhausted whilst the universe begins to contract. “Tipler and Barrow considered what might happen if intelligent machines converted the entire universe into a gigantic information-processing device. They proposed that in a [then] closed

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cosmos—one that eventually stops expanding and collapses back on itself—the ability of the universe to process information would approach infinity as it shrank toward a final singularity, or point.”14

This transhumanistic Omega Point is a term coined by the French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. So we are back in Spiritualism again.

I would like to end my talk with a quote of Helge Kragh, which brings us back to Wallace and his romantic spiritualism in the way of Schelling: ““We may already have entered a ‘post-modem cosmology’” Kragh says, “guided by only

aesthetic and mathematical considerations, a ‘new branch of thought [that will] use the language of physics, but will not rely on experimental perspectives’ (Silvio Bonometto). “

“Such post-empirical theories […] may also be said to belong to ‘hyperphysical physics’, to use the phrase coined by Schelling in the late eighteenth century.”

As my short look at its genealogy might have shown, the Anthropic Principle is a relict of the Nature Romantic world view of transzendental physics of the 19th century, and as such it represents a paradigm of countermodern science which, around 1900, fought against all the new scientific methodologies and paradigms of Thomson, Maxwell and Helmholtz, which made the scientific, industrial, economic and social progress of the 20th century possible. In that sense, Anthropic Principles are wistfully backward-looking, but they are also ironic in the sense of Horgan. They are ironic, because even in contrast to Wallace, they don’t take things serious. They are spiritualistic without Spiritualism, theories without the need of empirical prove, counter-modern in post modern disguise, they are nature idealistic without reflecting the logical and metaphysical grounds of Schellings or Hegels systems. In short, these Principles are pure Rhetoric. Maybe Rhetoric which is so urgently necessary to secure fundings and grants in an age where sensors, satellites and computer simulations spill out so many data, and cosmology has come to its end. But, why has it come to an end? - because we know to much. At least, that’s the conclusion Michael Hampe ended with:

“Who wanted to describe nature and the world at all […], would be under a stunning time pressure given the enormous complexity of the task. One may assume

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that in the time the draft of such a cosmology would take, the basis of it […], namely the scientific theories and lifestyles of people would have changed significantly.”

”So maybe we need to take farewell from cosmology. Perhaps this farewell is the price a culture must pay that has been subjected itself under such a degree of division of

labor and its corresponding dynamics […]

Thanx