Review : Designer universe

12 October 1996

If you get a kick out of cosmic coincidences The Anthropic Cosmological
Principle, reissued after a decade by Oxford University Press (£9.99, ISBN
0 19 282147 4), is definitely for you. John Barrow and Frank Tipler cover
everything from the spookily fine-tuned energy levels of beryllium, carbon and
oxygen, to the remarkable properties of water—all absolute essentials for
the evolution of life. The “anthropic” idea, which is that our very existence
may explain why the Universe is the way it is, is an extraordinary one. So too
is Barrow and Tipler’s account.