Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Evolution and the Meaning of Life

164 PRIMING DARWIN'S PUMP The Laws of the Game of Life 165
virtuosity that they can serve as the active building blocks of complex life.
And, just as fortunately, the same laws of physics provide for just enough
nonequilibrium in the world so that algorithmic processes can jump-start
themselves, eventually discovering those macromolecules and turning them
into tools for another wave of exploration and discovery. Thank God for
those laws!
Well? Shouldn't we? If the laws were any different, we have just seen, the
Tree of Life might never have sprung up. We may have figured out a way of
excusing God from the task of designing the replication-machinery system
(which can design itself automatically if any of the theories discussed in the
previous section are right, or on the right track) but even if we concede that
this is so, we still have the stupendous fact that the laws do permit this
wonderful unfolding to happen, and that has been quite enough to inspire
many people to surmise that the Intelligence of the Creator is the Wisdom of
the Lawgiver, instead of the Ingenuity of the Engineer.
When Darwin entertains the idea that the laws of nature are designed by
God, he has distinguished company, past and present. Newton insisted that
the original arrangement of the universe was inexplicable by "meer natural
causes" and could only be ascribed to "the Counsel and Contrivance of a
Voluntary Agent." Einstein spoke of the laws of nature as the "secrets of the
Old One" and famously expressed his disbelief in the role of chance in
quantum mechanics by proclaiming "Gott wiirfelt nicht"—God does not play
dice. More recently, the astronomer Fred Hoyle has said, "I do not believe
that any scientist who examined the evidence would fail to draw the
inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed
with regard to the consequences they produce inside the stars" (quoted in
Barrow and Tipler 1988, p. 22). The physicist and cosmologist Freeman
Dyson puts the point much more cautiously: "I do not claim that the architecture
of the universe proves the existence of God. I claim only that the
architecture of the universe is consistent with the hypothesis that mind plays
an essential role in its functioning" (Dyson 1979, p. 251). Darwin himself
was prepared to propose an honorable truce at this point, but Darwinian
thinking carries on, with a momentum created by the success of its earlier
applications to the same issue in other contexts.
As more and more has been learned about the development of the universe
since the Big Bang, about the conditions that permitted the formation of
galaxies and stars and the heavy elements from which planets can be formed,
physicists and cosmologists have been more and more struck by the exquisite
sensitivity of the laws of nature. The speed of light is approximately 186,000
miles per second. What if it were only 185,000 miles per second, or 187,000
miles per second? Would that change much of anything? What if the force of
gravity were 1 percent more or less than it is? The fundamental constants of
physics—the speed of light, the constant of grav-
itational attraction, the weak and strong forces of subatomic interaction,
Planck's constant—have values that of course permit the actual development
of the universe as we know it to have happened. But it turns out that if in
imagination we change any of these values by just the tiniest amount, we
thereby posit a universe in which none of this could have happened, and
indeed in which apparently nothing life-like could ever have emerged: no
planets, no atmospheres, no solids at all, no elements except hydrogen and
helium, or maybe not even that—just some boring plasma of hot, undifferentiated
stuff, or an equally boring nothingness. So isn't it a wonderful fact
that the laws are just right for us to exist? Indeed, one might want to add, we
almost didn't make it!
Is this wonderful fact something that needs an explanation, and, if so, what
kind of explanation might it receive? According to the Anthropic Principle,
we are entitled to infer facts about the universe and its laws from the
undisputed fact that we (we anthropoi, we human beings) are here to do the
inferring and observing. The Anthropic Principle comes in several flavors.
(Among the useful recent books is Barrow and Tipler 1988 and Breuer 1991.
See also Pagels 1985, Gardner 1986.)
In the "weak form," it is a sound, harmless, and on occasion useful application
of elementary logic: if x is a necessary condition for the existence
of y, and y exists, then x exists. If consciousness depends on complex
physical structures, and complex structures depend on large molecules
composed of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, then, since we are
conscious, the world must contain such elements.
But notice that there is a loose cannon on the deck in the previous
sentence: the wandering "must." I have followed the common practice in
ordinary English of couching a claim of necessity in a technically incorrect
way. As any student in logic class soon learns, what I really should have
written is:
It must be the case that: if consciousness depends ... then, since we are
conscious, the world contains such elements.
The conclusion that can be validly drawn is only that the world does contain
such elements, not that it had to contain such elements. It has to contain such
elements for us to exist, we may grant, but it might not have contained such
elements, and if that had been the case, we wouldn't be here to be dismayed.
It's as simple as that.
Some attempts to define and defend a "strong form" of the Anthropic
Principle strive to justify the late location of the "must" as not casual expression
but a conclusion about the way the universe necessarily is. I admit
that I find it hard to believe that so much confusion and controversy are
actually generated by a simple mistake of logic, but the evidence is really