The Anthropic Cosmological Principle

John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler

Foreward by John A. Wheeler

p vii "meaning is important, is even central"

p viii ref to L. J. Henderson's "The fitness of the environment", 1913 and

p ix George Wald on the unique properties of water, and chlorophyll, also refers to Brandon Carter.

p xi Preface, "Our picture of the universe and its laws are influenced by an unavoidable selectionn effect - that of our own existence." discusses dilemma of self selection - uses example of rat catcher who determined that all rats are over 6" long because his traps only caught rats of that size range.

Chapter 1 Introduction

p 1 "Mind as logically prior ..."

p 1 "Copernican principle that we do not occupy a privileged place in the universe .."

p 2 "Brandon Carter to limit the Copernican dogma by an 'Anthropic Principle' to the effect that 'our location in the universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers.' "

p 3 The furnaces that are available for the cooking of the elements of life, C,N,O,P are in the interiors of stars. They have to make, disperse and build new stars including these essential elements to provide the basis for life. That implies that we need 10 billion years. There is also more discussion of self selection here.

p 4 "the existence of life may be no more, but no less remarkable than the existence of the universe itself." (discussion of weak anthropic principle) Mentions Godel and Turing.

p 5 "We are constrained by the timescales of biological evolution to observe the universe only after billions of years...", the effect of the "constants of nature"

p 9-15 Outline of what is to come in other chapters.

p 13 "Anthropic Principles seek to link aspects of the global and local structure of the universe to those conditions necessary for the existence of living observers."

p 16 Weak Anthropic Principle definition

p 18 "boundary of the observable universe expands at the velocity of light."

p 18 "No one should be surprised to find the Universe to be as large as it is. We could not exist in one that was significantly smaller."

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

R Nave