God and Nature Spring 2021
Of Puddles and Persons |
|
By Lapo Lappin
"Imagine a puddle," Douglas Adams writes, "waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’”
Adams’ parable is a caricature of the so-called anthropic principle (from the Greek anthropos: human). At its plainest, the anthropic principle states that the fact that we observe the universe tells us that it must be of a kind that allows us to observe it. The chance that the universe would be “just right” for conscious observers, it turns out, is incredibly slim. It is much more likely that the universe would have contained no forms of life at all.
"What makes us human... is the observation that we can observe." |
The anthropic principle is often criticized for being too anthropocentric: it accords human beings an unwarranted importance by suggesting that the unlikely biological structure of Homo sapiens is spookily woven into the fundamental fabric of nature. This, in turn, sits uncomfortably with the alleged scientific principle that we are in no way a privileged part of the universe. Critics have therefore accused “anthropic” reasoning of reflecting our tendency to elevate human beings to the pinnacle of creation. The same argument could, after all, be made for any other being in the universe: as Adams suggests, one can argue that holes in the ground are designed for puddles.
But perhaps the problem with these kinds of arguments is not that they are too anthropocentric, but that they are not anthropocentric enough. There is a danger that while we argue that some improbable physical feature of the world is favorable to humans, we inadvertently end up reducing the human to its natural constituents. We first reduce the human being to a hunk of bio-carbons, sprinkled with H2O and inflated with oxygen; then, we go on to show how such a structure is somehow implicated in our unlikely constellation of laws of nature. But in doing so, we have already conceded that the essence of being human is a certain physical make-up. In the end, there is no qualitative difference between a puddle and a human. Not that there is anything wrong in reducing humans to their physical facets for methodological purposes; neither is there anything wrong in investigating the bearing of natural laws on these facets. But one cannot stop there. Something is missing.
While anthropic reasoning in modern cosmology is a relatively recent innovation, the underlying observation is an ancient one. The universe may well have turned out to be some another way, but it happens to be a way that allows us to be here. This is cause enough for wonder. But the causes for wonder did not stop there. From antiquity to the middle ages, every reflection about creation had two aspects. The first we recognize: it was the appreciation of creation, in all its beauty and intricacy; a physical account of why we are here. The second aspect, on the other hand, is one we have forgotten: it was a reflection on the fact that we can appreciate creation in all its beauty; that we can give a physical account of how we are here. This two-fold progression of the argument is ubiquitous in the forerunners of the anthropic principle: it starts with Socrates, is then adopted by Plato, and then by the Greek school of Stoicism; it lives on through the Christian Church Fathers, and into the middles ages. In all these sources, we discover the marvels of the cosmos. But it is even more marvelous that a part of this cosmos, human beings, have the capacity to marvel—the capacity to grasp that the cosmos is, in fact, marvelous. And in all these sources, the most important aspect is without doubt the second one.
The ancient anthropic principle makes a deep point about what it means to be human. Dante casts the idea in a poetic mold in the Paradiso:
All creatures are assembled
with order in their parts, and this
is what makes the universe God resemble.
Here higher creatures see the prints
of the divine: that is the purpose
for which he created all things.*
The two-fold structure of the classical argument maps onto the two stanzas: firstly, the poet acknowledges the deep arrangement of the cosmos. In the second stanza, he realizes that the final purpose of created order is to communicate to the “higher creatures” the “prints of the divine.”
Today, discussion of the anthropic principle is a niche subject, handled best by professional scientists, and of negligible interest to the wider public. But for these authors, this question was the very essence of what it means to be human. The sixth-century bishop Isidore of Seville, for example, speculates in his Etymologiae that the Greek word anthropos derives from the fact that humans can lift their face (ops) up to the sky and reason about their place in the world. Other authors went even further. The capacity of looking at the world around us, particularly at the stars, and raising the question of God through that contemplation is often treated as a biological feature of human beings. Saint Augustine, in the fourth century, attributes our species’ erect posture to the fact that humans, unlike the rest of the animal kingdom, can look up at the stars and question their purpose in the world. For Augustine, the anthropic principle is in our DNA. Even if, post-Darwin, the idea that erect posture is for the purpose of philosophical reflection and stargazing appears peculiar, the fundamental point remains: what makes us human is not an observation about mammal metabolism or genetic sequencing; it is the observation that we can observe.
If we could question Saint Augustine today and ask him to diagnose our situation, he would probably read it in two directions. He would firstly see the development of matter from the primordial fluctuations of the Big Bang to a particularly complex primate. But he would likely also call our attention to a second, more mysterious movement: the doubling-back of the human mind to envelop the entirety of the cosmos. There is a primary, material drive towards the generation of humans, but at the same time there is also an intellectual movement in the inverse direction, back towards the origins of everything. The “purpose” of creation is to allow us to formulate the question of purpose. I believe that is the line of argument that Augustine would champion.
If we were to take the historical view seriously, we would have a ready answer to give to Adams' puddle analogy. Simply because we can wonder whether we are to the universe what a puddle is to hole, we have already shown that we are fundamentally unlike any puddle. Adams' thought experiment presupposes the very issue that is at stake: that a being becomes conscious, questions the circumstances of its own existence, reflects on its place in the cosmos—then, whether anthropine or acqueomorph, that being is entirely in its rights to pose the question of God.
*Translation by the author
Lapo Lappin is a graduate student in philosophy from the University of Uppsala, Sweden, now studying in Innsbruck, Austria. His main interests are metaphysics and the relationship between science and religion. Lapo was awarded second place in the 2018 Christians in Science Essay Competition and the 2015 Peacocke Prize. During the pandemic, he edited the Swedish anthology Filosofi och pandemi ("Philosophy and the Pandemic"), featuring interviews with philosophers on the Covid-19 pandemic.
But perhaps the problem with these kinds of arguments is not that they are too anthropocentric, but that they are not anthropocentric enough. There is a danger that while we argue that some improbable physical feature of the world is favorable to humans, we inadvertently end up reducing the human to its natural constituents. We first reduce the human being to a hunk of bio-carbons, sprinkled with H2O and inflated with oxygen; then, we go on to show how such a structure is somehow implicated in our unlikely constellation of laws of nature. But in doing so, we have already conceded that the essence of being human is a certain physical make-up. In the end, there is no qualitative difference between a puddle and a human. Not that there is anything wrong in reducing humans to their physical facets for methodological purposes; neither is there anything wrong in investigating the bearing of natural laws on these facets. But one cannot stop there. Something is missing.
While anthropic reasoning in modern cosmology is a relatively recent innovation, the underlying observation is an ancient one. The universe may well have turned out to be some another way, but it happens to be a way that allows us to be here. This is cause enough for wonder. But the causes for wonder did not stop there. From antiquity to the middle ages, every reflection about creation had two aspects. The first we recognize: it was the appreciation of creation, in all its beauty and intricacy; a physical account of why we are here. The second aspect, on the other hand, is one we have forgotten: it was a reflection on the fact that we can appreciate creation in all its beauty; that we can give a physical account of how we are here. This two-fold progression of the argument is ubiquitous in the forerunners of the anthropic principle: it starts with Socrates, is then adopted by Plato, and then by the Greek school of Stoicism; it lives on through the Christian Church Fathers, and into the middles ages. In all these sources, we discover the marvels of the cosmos. But it is even more marvelous that a part of this cosmos, human beings, have the capacity to marvel—the capacity to grasp that the cosmos is, in fact, marvelous. And in all these sources, the most important aspect is without doubt the second one.
The ancient anthropic principle makes a deep point about what it means to be human. Dante casts the idea in a poetic mold in the Paradiso:
All creatures are assembled
with order in their parts, and this
is what makes the universe God resemble.
Here higher creatures see the prints
of the divine: that is the purpose
for which he created all things.*
The two-fold structure of the classical argument maps onto the two stanzas: firstly, the poet acknowledges the deep arrangement of the cosmos. In the second stanza, he realizes that the final purpose of created order is to communicate to the “higher creatures” the “prints of the divine.”
Today, discussion of the anthropic principle is a niche subject, handled best by professional scientists, and of negligible interest to the wider public. But for these authors, this question was the very essence of what it means to be human. The sixth-century bishop Isidore of Seville, for example, speculates in his Etymologiae that the Greek word anthropos derives from the fact that humans can lift their face (ops) up to the sky and reason about their place in the world. Other authors went even further. The capacity of looking at the world around us, particularly at the stars, and raising the question of God through that contemplation is often treated as a biological feature of human beings. Saint Augustine, in the fourth century, attributes our species’ erect posture to the fact that humans, unlike the rest of the animal kingdom, can look up at the stars and question their purpose in the world. For Augustine, the anthropic principle is in our DNA. Even if, post-Darwin, the idea that erect posture is for the purpose of philosophical reflection and stargazing appears peculiar, the fundamental point remains: what makes us human is not an observation about mammal metabolism or genetic sequencing; it is the observation that we can observe.
If we could question Saint Augustine today and ask him to diagnose our situation, he would probably read it in two directions. He would firstly see the development of matter from the primordial fluctuations of the Big Bang to a particularly complex primate. But he would likely also call our attention to a second, more mysterious movement: the doubling-back of the human mind to envelop the entirety of the cosmos. There is a primary, material drive towards the generation of humans, but at the same time there is also an intellectual movement in the inverse direction, back towards the origins of everything. The “purpose” of creation is to allow us to formulate the question of purpose. I believe that is the line of argument that Augustine would champion.
If we were to take the historical view seriously, we would have a ready answer to give to Adams' puddle analogy. Simply because we can wonder whether we are to the universe what a puddle is to hole, we have already shown that we are fundamentally unlike any puddle. Adams' thought experiment presupposes the very issue that is at stake: that a being becomes conscious, questions the circumstances of its own existence, reflects on its place in the cosmos—then, whether anthropine or acqueomorph, that being is entirely in its rights to pose the question of God.
*Translation by the author
Lapo Lappin is a graduate student in philosophy from the University of Uppsala, Sweden, now studying in Innsbruck, Austria. His main interests are metaphysics and the relationship between science and religion. Lapo was awarded second place in the 2018 Christians in Science Essay Competition and the 2015 Peacocke Prize. During the pandemic, he edited the Swedish anthology Filosofi och pandemi ("Philosophy and the Pandemic"), featuring interviews with philosophers on the Covid-19 pandemic.