Thank you, Ales and Jim, for questioning the question, also called the "anthropic question" or " fine tuning for life" question.  Many people have tried to answer directly, and then get into those often repeated and, on its face, puzzling statements that usually follow the anthropic question -- e.g., "This is highly improbable according to current physics theories".

The "range that allows life to exist" is unknown, as Ales said.  We still cannot define what life might actually be, even for the life that is here and we see every day. Many biology textbooks cite that water is essential for life but a tardigrade, an animal found easily on Earth, can take the "tun" form and stay alive without any water,  even in the vacuum of space.

I also agree with Jim, that just because we are here we should not think that this spot is special or better for life (even for life as we know it). The question uses somewhat the inverse of the "sharpshooter's fallacy".  We paint a target centered on the single hit that we see (this universe) and fancy that the only valid gunshot (life) is that one hit.

More interesting physics questions, for example, could be about unknown relationships that would cluster nature's fundamental constants into a smaller set,  offering less degrees of freedom, and whether this could make the universe that we see more likely to exist.  This could be an even better argument for "fine tuning for life", but one that we can verify.

Ed -

There are infinitely many possible universes, any one of which would be improbable, I think.  But no one would witness a universe that did not sustain life.  We happen to be here because out of many possible events, this one is as good as another.  Well, maybe some might be considered more probable, I don't know, but this one was apparently not "impossible."     :-) 

That would be the physical 'explanation.'  That does not discount a spiritual one, but that brings up a different "Why?" 

Cheers - Jim

Thank you, Ales and Jim, for questioning the question, also called the "anthropic question" or " fine tuning for life" question.  Many people have tried to answer directly, and then get into those often repeated and, on its face, puzzling statements that usually follow the anthropic question -- e.g., "This is highly improbable according to current physics theories".

The "range that allows life to exist" is unknown, as Ales said.  We still cannot define what life might actually be, even for the life that is here and we see every day. Many biology textbooks cite that water is essential for life but a tardigrade, an animal found easily on Earth, can take the "tun" form and stay alive without any water,  even in the vacuum of space.

I also agree with Jim, that just because we are here we should not think that this spot is special or better for life (even for life as we know it). The question uses somewhat the inverse of the "sharpshooter's fallacy".  We paint a target centered on the single hit that we see (this universe) and fancy that the only valid gunshot (life) is that one hit.

More interesting physics questions, for example, could be about unknown relationships that would cluster nature's fundamental constants into a smaller set,  offering less degrees of freedom, and whether this could make the universe that we see more likely to exist.  This could be an even better argument for "fine tuning for life", but one that we can verify.

The a priori probability of winning Euro-Jackpot is extremely small. But the conditional probability of having won, given that you have won, is unity. Just like observed physics should be consistent with the fact that we are here to observe that physics. It would be more puzzling (and interesting) if it did not appear to be like that. 

Of course, such reasoning assumes the possibility of many different universes being realized. In some of them, with different fundamental parameters, maybe different forms of life -- and life-forms asking questions about its existence -- could exists.

In his random dynamics project, Holger Bech Nielsen tried to argue quantitatively that the world we observe is a quite likely possibility.

Because life evolves to fit the cosmos. The whole fine-tuning argument seems to me like sophomoric backwards reasoning, which is a disaster when dealing with probabilities.

Ed Gerk you make an interesting point:

"More interesting physics questions, for example, could be about unknown relationships that would cluster nature's fundamental constants into a smaller set,  offering less degrees of freedom, and whether this could make the universe that we see more likely to exist.".

likely == probable in a classic sense, outside of the provisions of chaos theory there is also little little to be improbable about a deterministic system. From a quantum perspective though, a deterministic system is still built on probabilistic inputs? If that be true than we might conclude that quantum information theory makes possible a curious sounding possibility of "probabilistic determinism". E.g, a common logic gate semiconductor is one such example. You may find the attached trip into this area interesting. 

Article The Third State: Toward a Quantum Information Theory of Consciousness

No one knows-essentially, because the statement ``allow life to exist'' isn't well-defined. It shouldn't be forgotten, either, that the fine structure constant depends on the energy  scale and it's known how it does, to some precision.  It takes the value of 1/137 at atomic scales, increases to 1/128 at the mass of the Z, 90 GeV and so on. So it did go through different values during the evolution of our Universe. It isn't known how it evolved beyond the TeV scale, currently probed by the LHC, due to lack of data. For any evolution, beyond the tens of TeVs, implies assumptions about the degrees of freedom that may appear at those scales.

The cosmological constant isn't known in such detail, since it isn't known how it evolves with scale, in the absence of a quantum theory of gravity. 

So the statement about a ``highly improbable range'' for their values can't be given any meaning, because it isn't known how to compute the probability that the fine structure constant takes the values it takes, as a function of the energy-the renormalization group flow for it is known very approximately--too approximately to allow any meaningful answer to such a question. It could be that these values are ``highly probable''. It's not known, however, at this time.

Or maybe: Universum ergo sum et cogito.

Constants are human inventions to simply the human perception of the complexity of nature. 

Because of nature's dynamics, constants do not exist in nature, which would imply that life does not exist in such a framework

Perhaps human-defined constants only exist in an infinite small human-defined time frame (instant), which would imply that life can exist at such a scale of constants? 

Marcel,

Constants appear naturally in physics, although they are more appropriately called invariants.  In physics, when we talk about a "constant" we usually mean an "invariant".

For example, in Maxwell's equations the speed of light is an invariant, although it is not constant at all -- the value depends on the medium, light moves faster in vacuum and slower in water.  Einstein's relativity theory was at first called "invariant theory" for this reason.

Invariants also play a key role In natural sciences. We multiply the power of our means of observation and reasoning, but our starting and ending points remain sensorial, the phenomena and relationships. In that, as said by Max Planck, "Our task it to find in all these [relative] factors and data, the absolute, the universally valid, the invariant, that is hidden in them."

Of course, we understand that the search for the absolute in science, as mentioned by Max Planck, still includes the possibility of new phenomena and new realizations, unexplained or in refutation of that what was once thought to be the universally valid, the invariant. And that is a further reason why invariants are useful in physics, as they become a good target for investigation, to be skeptical about.

Cheers,

Ed Gerck

Ales,

Your considerations could be a good basis for discussion and they can, thus, be extended also by theory, not just by waiting for more experimental data.

To expand them, the only scientific requirement is that you follow the scientific method.

This may seem well-established and "simple" -- follow the scientific method -- but there is considerable room for debate what that means. What is scientific and what is not? This question is often called the "Demarcation Problem". It is a BIG problem for people working in Quantum Cosmology.

The question of "what is scientific?" has befuddled philosophers since the days of Aristotle, and  possibly the Babylonians and the Sumerians (as we may infer), and recently led Karl Popper, Nancy Cartwright  and others to claim answers that run counter to experiment.

Physicists have erected a pretty good wall there, the answer is to "ask nature."  If  nature agrees, a physicist says that the theory is "right"; if nature disagrees, the theory is "wrong."  Answers that cannot be measured are, at most, speculative. Answers that run counter to experiment are "wrong."

In physics, right and wrong are given a quoted caveat, a delayed judgement. The caveat means "right until proven wrong" and "wrong until proven right," where "proven" means "proven until changed."  A YES means "NOT YET FALSE" and a NO means "COULD BE TRUE".

Most physicists are willing to accept the existence of things that cannot be proven.

Conversely, most mathematicians are willing to accept the existence of things without any relation to phenomena — e.g. things that we, at present, cannot observe or construct in the physical world.

By using both viewpoints (physics and mathematics) at once, it seems to me that we can take a truly open-ended attitude on science albeit provided that we do the same regarding our own state of ignorance. Science cannot prove truth.

Whether or not we can observe something directly, contemplating its possible existence may allow us to understand how it might play a role in how the world works. This is the direction that I think the scientific method is evolving to. There are epistemological issues, and much historical baggage to digest, including the question of causality.

Back to the speed of light in vacuum, let us consider to be possible that the speed of gravitational waves is higher.  If this possibility is confirmed by a sound theory, the theory will make predictions that can be tested by an experiment. That's where the experiment will be critical. However, even if the theory is "wrong" it can still be useful (as a "not this way"), it can be improved to be "right" (as general relativity was), or it can be applied successfully to a different problem (as Boolean logic was). The science machine is 100% recycling.

Cheers,

Ed Gerck

   Ed,

   If the gravitons are going to carry energy and momentum then they cannot have a higher speed than the light in vacuum.

Daniel,

Thank you. I was not arguing the theory. Just that if a sound theory (albeit unlikely) is found, the theory will be useful whether its results are confirmed or denied.

Likewise, if such a theory is denied a priori by a sound  "impossibility statement" (eg, If the gravitons are going to carry energy and momentum then they cannot have a higher speed than the light in vacuum), then we need to consider the same two options futurewise (confirmed or denied). Although no statement is above re-evaluation in physics, nothing is "thrown away" -- re-revaluation is knowledge-accretive.

Cheers,

Ed Gerck

Ed.

Usually the theories born as a necessary form of solving real problems and not like pure ideas taken from Plato's world. In no theory that I know the gravitons are with higher velocity than the light and if this were possible, then hard work will be necessary for justifying it within the scientific community.

Daniel,

Thank you. You bring two interesting statements.

1. Usually the theories [are] born as a necessary form of solving real problems and not like pure ideas taken from Plato's world.

I find that in the negative. One large class of counterexamples is cross-utilization from maths to physics, for example, when a theory was developed in pure mathematics and much later applied to physics. The theory was a pure idea when it was created, and often the real problem was not even known.

2. In no theory that I know the gravitons are with higher velocity than the light and if this were possible, then hard work will be necessary for justifying it within the scientific community.

I agree with you and I say more -- If it were known that gravitational waves must have at most the speed of light in vacuum, then there would be no funding for the many, very expensive tests of gravitational wave speed. Yet,  research is quite active in this area. Hard work seems to be justifiable.

Cheers,

Ed Gerck

  Ed,

1. Maths in Physics are tools, that obviously the needs stimulate their creation (e.g. Newton infinitesimal calculus, Dirac with topology or Feynman with path integrals). I do not know that any result of Mathematics has been the origin of a theory in Physics.

2. Nobody study the possibility that the gravitons can be tachyons. If that would be the case then something would be wrong. The research is on the possibility to find them, which is a quite different problem.

Einstein knew how to do science. First come the conceptual ideas and principles. Then, and only then, does one find the mathematics that best expresses and extends those conceptual ideas.

When the math comes first one gets temporary model-building at best, and Ptolemaic models at worst.

Robert> First come the conceptual ideas and principles

That may sound like the right way, if you are equipped with a perfectly working (i.e. inhuman) brain. In practice, philosophy and verbal reasoning are bad tools for reasoning (as is amply demonstrated in most Q&A threads here).

In practice, a idea must be formulated mathematically before its consequences can be deduced in a reliable way. Sometimes with unexpected results, sometimes this can be used to resolve philosophical "paradoxes", and usually this can be used to check/verify established principles (which are mostly just a synthesis of many previous ideas and experiences). Without the involvement of mathematics at a sufficiently early stage, all conceptual ideas and principles remain irrelevant mumbo-jumbo. Just compare the developments of philosophy and science after Newton!

I tend to agree with Daniel that physical theories have developed ahead of (but not in the absence of) mathematics. Newton had to develop calculus for his mechanics (which however is referred to as Principia Mathematica). Heisenberg had to use a pre-existing  mathematical theory of matrices for his formulation of matrix mechanics, while Schrödinger relied on existing mathematical theory of partial differential equations and eigenvalue problems. The Wiener integral existed before Feynman's path integral formulation. Riemann geometry existed before the formulation of general relativity, a lot of group theory existed before it came into use in quantum theory. I think it is fair to say that the development has been a successful symbiosis.

Robert> When the math comes first one gets temporary model-building at best, and Ptolemaic models at worst.

There is some grains of truth in this. People have to publish papers to survive in science; then it becomes tempting to follow the fairly straightforward route of constructing new models using established procedures, and to analyze their consequences using established methods. It is anyway a better road than expressing grumpy complaints against established, experimentally verified science, and formulating vain advise about how it should be done.

Daniel, Robert, and Kare,

Daniel > I do not know that any result of Mathematics has been the origin of a theory in Physics.

Robert > When the math comes first one gets temporary model-building at best, and Ptolemaic models at worst.

Kare > I think it is fair to say that the development has been a successful symbiosis.

Where did the insight come first? I tend to agree with Kare, that it has been symbiotic. Looking from the maths corner, Boolean algebra came some 100 years before it was used (and modified) in physics, Riemann geometry and Noether's theorem also came earlier, and so on. Moreover, a good physics theory is a good mathematical prediction.

It could be well, thus, for physics if we find a way to work more comfortably with mathematical arguments sometimes being the forerunner, because that is what we see in practice.

I am not sure that current philosophy could be a good guide in that, although some noted physicists think so: http://www.nature.com/news/scientific-method-defend-the-integrity-of-physics-1.16535

And pretty soon, considering their large development paces and increasing number of researchers, I wager that natural science branches such as climatology and biology will also be common forerunners to physics or, at least, to what physics can explain and, thereby, drive physics development. The 1827 botany observation of the Brownian motion came about 80 years before Einstein explained it, which closed the debate on the continuous theory of matter in physics.

Kare > People have to publish papers to survive in science; then it becomes tempting to follow the fairly straightforward route of constructing new models using established procedures, and to analyze their consequences using established methods. It is anyway a better road than expressing grumpy complaints against established, experimentally verified science, and formulating vain advise about how it should be done.

Mathematics and physics can be much broader once you question them, and discover that what we call mathematics and physics were made up by people, by people like you and I, and you can change them, you can DIY (do-it-yourself) them, you can hack them, you can create your own definitions and theories, knowledge that you hope other people can use.

Oftentimes, students give up on mathematics and science because they do not seem to make sense. The student may be right, and that is why the DIY case is important.

For example, when 5-year-old Christopher looks at different results on a calculator and concludes that zero is not really a number, Christopher is stating that zero belongs to a different class than other numbers. This is evidenced in division, where you can divide a number by any other number except zero. Perhaps, seeing zero as the "absence of a number" rather than a number, can lead to simplifications, if not new results or, at least, to peace for one's soul. Likewise, ca. 1950, some mathematicians got tired of writing "any prime number except 1" in theorems and decided, one by one in DIY fashion, that 1 would no longer be a prime number — although 1 satisfied all the conditions to be a prime number.

Even pure mathematics changes by doing experiments in pure mathematics, not just physics, Another common ground for symbiosis.

Cheers,

Ed Gerck

Ed> Perhaps, seeing zero as the "absence of a number" rather than a number, can lead to simplifications

I don't think that would be a good direction of change; the addition of a point at infinity (so that 1/0 make sense) has proven more fruitful. Even modern computers have followed that idea to some extent, as Christopher has discovered.

Ed> you can DIY (do-it-yourself)

Certainly. In fact you have to DIY to seriously understand anything. And you can try to change concepts and procedures. But until now, it has never proven successful to change too much at the same time. Existing knowledge is a tightly knit web, based on many wrong and some right ideas, confronted with many observations and challenged by many alternative explanations and philosophical principles. In this way most wrong ideas have been weeded out.

Even the most revolutionary change in science, the discovery of quantum mechanics, did not change the applicability of Newtonian mechanics; it only defined a (somewhat fuzzy) boundary for it range of validity.

Ed> common ground for symbiosis

I don't think the situation is bad, although there are always room for improvements. It is an unavoidable (it seems) but unfortunate tendency that different fields develop different language and jargon, where even the same words tends to mean significantly different things. And sometimes one gets the feeling that trivial or vague ideas are wrapped into very impressive language to make them seem profound. One way of improvement (within fields of science) would be to formulate and explain results in as plain language as possible (if not plainer), delegating precision to mathematical formulas.  

    Ed,

   "Looking from the maths corner, Boolean algebra came some 100 years before it was used (and modified) in physics, Riemann geometry and Noether's theorem also came earlier, and so on2

   Yes, they are tools in Physics but not theories of Physics at all, as I told you in my post.

    Happy, fruitful and healthy New Year 2016 for everybody!

    Daniel

Kåre,

Thank you for your reply, I tend to agree with your comments. I observe some details below.

In ordinary arithmetic, 1/0 is undefined, so it is a non-starter to use it for anything. Without using anything undefined, the idea of infinity (+ and -) can be reached consistently just by counting, and other classes of infinity can likewise be introduced. Floating point calculations in a computer may indeed generate + or - infinity, but that was just a (questionable) human decision in the IEEE standard; other standards (and even IEEE) may just produce a NaN (not a number) result.

What 5-year old Christopher (a real case, cited in a gifted education study) realized about the concept of zero is something more profound, I think. It also applies to solid-state physics; for example, in semiconductors we see a hole as the "absence of an electron" from a full valence band, not as a new particle. It works better this way.

Perhaps this shows that mathematics can also hinder physics, not just help. If the mathematical model is too blunt (zero is a new entity, so it must be a new number), then a physicist may be led to not think about the reality of absence. The absence of an electron (a hole), however, is as real as an electron in a semiconductor.

Kåre > it has never proven successful to change too much at the same time.

Many scientists, journal referees, deans, and investors think so. Leibniz said, "Natura non facit saltus",  or "nature does not make jumps." But Leibniz did not know about quantum mechanics, tunneling, and leapfrogging.  Could it be, then, that in some cases we can help enable successful jumps in knowledge, rather than just avoiding changing too much at the same time? And, in other cases, can we help prevent potentially disastrous "too much at the same time"?

Kåre > One way of improvement (within fields of science) would be to formulate and explain results in as plain language as possible (if not plainer), delegating precision to mathematical formulas.

I tend to agree, although one must be careful not to make the plain language too "plain". This may also help as we see more machine reading of papers, and formulas, into databases. This is already happening in biology, where one can consult online databases (mostly free) to easily identify the organisms that may have a given, measured DNA fragment.

Cheers,

Ed Gerck

The scientific method with its predictions/testing steps tells us whether we are heading in the right direction and when we have jumped the tracks, so to speak.

Robert,

Yes, the scientific method is the basic tool. However, there is no "the" scientific method and it has been evolving -- some of us are now trying to shake off Popper's misconceptions about the discovery process in natural science and what the scientific method should consider to be "scientific".

Although valid predictions must result from the application of the scientific method, a hypothesis is not simply a prediction, a hypothesis can be better defined (Gerck, 2013)  as a "testable relationship". Further, the result from the scientific method is not truth, it is not a final YES  or NO.  The result, to be scientific, needs to be understood as YES = NOT YET FALSE and  NO = COULD BE TRUE.

Yet, this makes a shaky foundation for science as an enterprise dedicated to discovering the truth about the Universe, or as a modern-day sharashka where truth is something assigned to be researched by low-paid postdocs, or as an expounder to governments and society of facts that are the truth. There is no such thing in science, although there are things that we think we know.

Cheers,

Ed Gerck

Daniel,

You wrote "Yes, they are tools in Physics but not theories of Physics at all, as I told you in my post."

I see how you  can say that, but is it a theory of physics only if the author publishes it in a physics journal? You acknowledged in a previous posting that physicists have freely published novel mathematical results; the same should be possible in the other direction and from other science areas (not just maths).

People can always call "sloppy" and "not formally correct" a result published in another area of science, in another lingo, but (if they look close enough) the same can be said in their own area of science and maybe about their own papers!

In 1854, George Boole was the first to publish an evidence-based theory on the laws of thought, and although we accept that thought exists and is part of physical reality -- no one doubts that we do think -- we are not even there yet in physics.

Cheers,

Ed Gerck

Thanks Ed for opening also this stream of chat. I just read the most interesting conversation and while not a 'Physicist' by profession I use it in my research and I share the same interest in the issues discussed.  But also as a neuroscientists (including a bit of psychology, sociology, anthropology)  I cannot avoid to look closer to home for the pattern of thinking we often have and share.  The vetted issue of relation between physics and mathematics often assumes that they are something there outside humans ' minds' which at their best try to use them in a symbiotic way.  What if we accept that both Physic' and Mathematics, and for that matter science in general, is a very human behaviour emerged fro the evolution of the 'thinking' brains.  If so then a simple distinction can be made between math and physics that avoids the apparent methaphysical confrontation.  Physics deals with some form of experience of the external world, and respond to a question, initially implicit of human cultures, of ' what it there?  How things are?  This happened well before the language of mathematics was developed. Yet the brain processes to help answering such questions involves some aspect of what we started to call ' rationality' (ratio is after all a late term already post symbolic division).  Such brain operations can be seen at the root of logic/ mathematics and is a 'mental' tool that emerged from brain functions. And remain a brain function and brain functions are what they are ' brain functions' not properties of the universe!  Thus the validity of the rational thinking/logic is what makes some utterances true and other false, or all the good sensible intermediates Ed mentioned.  But are still part of the 'mental tools of brained animals at the highest lever of evolution  so far.  Then how thing are out there require physical interactions with what is out there (observations/ experiments), ie experiences of the world.  Whether what we utter is true or false is an internal working in the brain/mind.  Usually the two mental states of experiencing the world and the thinking clearly/logically go hand in hand and their relation is a question more of human brain function than disciplinary boundaries diatribes.  I realise this is a very humanistic/ neuroscientist view of two such powerful disciplines, so powerful and successful that we collectively have been inclined to believe, perhaps too readily, that  they are  like the mind of God. A bit anthropocentric?  They are the best we have though and must make the best of them.

Dear Ed Gerck,

I take the fact that the constants in the current Big Bang model are fine tuned in the sense that small variation of a few of them would have render life impossible as a direct consequence of the modeling method that is assumed by the current Big Bang model.  This modeling approach assume a certain theoretical state of affair at a posited origin from all kind of astronomical observation the contant in this model are approximate in order to fit the observation.  This very process is a fine tuning model and when we derive a model using such fine tuning method we should not be surprise that the model is fine tuned.   It is fine tune by us and not by Nature and in fact this is a predictive model and not really a model of origin.  This model assumes an origin and so cannot explain that assumption.  It justify this assumption on the basis of that it can predict the history of the universe as we observed it.  But we cannot make any observatin of the origin and so the origin can be anything that predict the observe part.  If then one question where this origin come from then the only logical answer is to say: it come from a scientific method of modeling based on observation.  Modeling the cosmos will always necessitate to assume an original theoretical state of affair of which the question where it comes from will never be answer from the framework of this modeling.  The best we can do would be with a model whose only law is how law can evolve out of a totally chaotic background and that would explain both the current law of physics and the actual history of the universe.  Where this evolutionary law come from will necessary be unknown. The original theoretical unexplained background would at least be small.