From Alex Kasman
Amanda Gefter seeks reasonable explanations for the apparent “fine-tuning” of the laws of physics to support life, aside from the multiverse and the intelligent designer (6 December 2008, p 48). Three alternatives come to mind.
The perception of “fine-tuning” is based on the idea that the parameters of physics – for example the relative strengths of various forces – can be individually tuned. But if some mathematical “theory of everything” were to provide a unified explanation for all of these forces, we might find that they are necessarily related. Their having values less amenable to life would then be as fanciful as having “more sound, but with less fluctuation of air pressure”.
Secondly, it is argued that if these physical parameters were different, the elementary particles that form matter in our universe would hardly interact and so could not form things like living beings. But it seems possible that there are particles in our universe that we have not noticed because they hardly interact, and that these would interact strongly under a different set of physical laws, and form some sort of matter (and living beings).
Finally, we have been surprised to find life on Earth in places we did not predict it could exist, such as the deep-sea vents. If some sort of life that we cannot presently imagine could arise in many of those hypothetical universes then there is no mystery here at all.
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Human ignorance leaves room for simpler and less dramatic explanations than a creator, a multiverse or the power of consciousness… and is something I definitely believe in.
Charleston, South Carolina, US
