There is something stunningly narrow about how the Anthropic Principle is phrased. Yes, only certain laws and constants of nature are consistent with… - Carl Sagan

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Engraved portrait of Carl Sagan, facing right

There is something stunningly narrow about how the Anthropic Principle is phrased. Yes, only certain laws and constants of nature are consistent with our kind of life. But essentially the same laws and constants are required to make a rock. So why not talk about a Universe designed so rocks could one day come to be, and strong and weak Lithic Principles? If stones could philosophize, I imagine Lithic Principles would be at the intellectual frontiers.

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About Carl Sagan

Carl Edward Sagan (9 November 1934 – 20 December 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. Sagan assembled the first physical messages sent into space, the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record, universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. Sagan argued the hypothesis, accepted since, that the high surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to, and calculated using, the greenhouse effect. He testified to the US Congress in 1985 that the greenhouse effect will change the earth's climate system.

Biography information from Wikiquote · Portrait adapted from Wikimedia Commons, NASA/JPL (Public domain / CC0)

Also Known As

Native Name: Carl Edward Sagan
Alternative Names: Sagan Carl E. Sagan Carl E Sagan C. E. Sagan C.E. Sagan C E Sagan C. Sagan C Sagan Sagan C Sagan C. Sagan C. E. Sagan CE

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We, who cannot even put our own planetary home in order, riven with rivalries and hatreds, despoiling our environment, murdering one another through irritation and inattention as well as on deadly purpose, and moreover a species that until only recently was convinced that the Universe was made for its sole benefit — are we to venture out into space, move worlds, re-engineer planets, spread to neighboring star systems?

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"In the 1920s, there was a dinner at which the physicist <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/464827.Robert_W__Wood" rel="nofollow noopener" title="Robert W. Wood">Robert W. Wood</a> was asked to respond to a toast ... 'To physics and metaphysics.' Now by metaphysics was meant something like philosophy — truths that you could get to just by thinking about them. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/464827.Wood" rel="nofollow noopener" title="Wood">Wood</a> took a second, glanced about him, and answered along these lines: The physicist has an idea, he said. The more he thinks it through, the more sense it makes to him. He goes to the scientific literature, and the more he reads, the more promising the idea seems. Thus prepared, he devises an experiment to test the idea. The experiment is painstaking. Many possibilities are eliminated or taken into account; the accuracy of the measurement is refined. At the end of all this work, the experiment is completed and ... the idea is shown to be worthless. The physicist then discards the idea, frees his mind (as I was saying a moment ago) from the clutter of error, and moves on to something else. The difference between physics and metaphysics, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/464827.Wood" rel="nofollow noopener" title="Wood">Wood</a> concluded, is that the metaphysicist has no laboratory."

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