Fine Tuning and the Laws of Nature
Another
difficult point concerns whether we could say that divine design “used fine
tuning” if the fundamental laws of physics were in fact all-dictating
laws: laws with no free parameters. It
could at first seem that there would then be just no way in which anything
could be tuned. The strength ratio
between electromagnetism and gravity, for instance, would have to be what it
was, given that the fundamental laws were what they were, and so would the
masses of the neutron, the proton and the electron. Once the laws were in
place, no divine designer could have been faced with a range of possibilities
among which he could have chosen cunningly. All the same, there could be room
for talk of “fine tuning”, I suggest. For suppose that many slightly different
systems of fundamental law, each dictating exactly how events would have
developed, would all of them have led to the existence of a universe containing
forces recognisable as gravity and electromagnetism, and particles recognisable
as neutrons, protons and electrons, but with the precise properties of those
forces and particles differing in each case. I suggest that a divine designer
could then be said to have “fine tuned” the properties by choosing the
fundamental laws appropriately.
When
even the distinction between “God’s using physical laws” and “God’s operating
through miraculous acts of interference” can become fuzzy, this field is going
to supply plenty of work for philosophers like me. But unfortunately it may not
be work which settles anything of much importance. It may simply amount to
recommending various ways of using words, on disappointingly arbitrary grounds.
What does seem to me important, however, is that we distinguish firmly between divine selection and observational selection. Many scientists
who describe our cosmic situation as “fine tuned for life” believe that
observational selection is at work here. They think that a gigantic cosmos
includes hugely many domains worth calling “universes”. The many universes
might be widely separated in space, in a cosmos that had inflated enormously;
or they might be successive oscillations of an oscillating cosmos; or they
might spring into existence entirely independently. Now, several mechanisms
have been proposed for making the various universes differ in the strengths of
their forces, in the masses of their particles, and in other respects as well.
Brandon Carter’s “anthropic principle” then reminds us that only life - permitting
conditions give rise to beings able to observe them.
Contributed by: Dr. John Leslie
|
