The Three Bears Return

Then how can all things be for man's sake? How can we be the masters of God's handiwork? (Johannes Kepler)

It's not a pretty picture. While Goldilocks is sound asleep, the three bears return to their house. "Someone's been eating my porridge," growls Papa Bear. "Someone's been eating mine," says Mama Bear. "Someone ate all of mine!" cries the baby. They find the broken chair and the messy beds. Just as they spot Goldilocks, she wakes up and screams. Then she runs out of the house and into the woods, never to return.

That's the tame version. In the older, R-rated edition, Goldilocks jumps out of a second story window when she sees the bears. "Whether she broke her neck in the fall; or ran into the wood and was lost there; or found her way out of the wood, and was taken up by the constable and sent to the House of Correction for a vagrant as she was, I cannot tell. But the Three Bears never saw anything more of her."

The story after which a cosmological enigma is named is actually a cautionary tale. In case you missed the warning, here it is: "Goldilocks, don't assume the porridge is for you. Or the chairs, or the beds, or anything in the house. They're not yours."

Should we take similar warning? Are we "the masters of God's handiwork," as Kepler asked? Is the universe for us?

You know how we came about. The very first stars baked up carbon in their furnaces, then died and sent it into space. A second generation of stars gathered it up and generated heavier elements, only to die and repeat the process. The spatial debris coalesced into a third set of stars--but also into planets, our own included. From there our kind of life (carbon-based) could emerge, and finally us, the surveyors of it all. On a scale where 13.7 billion years is reduced to 1 year, it took until December 31 and roughly 11:57 PM to get to us. That's a whole lot of time.

And it's a lot of space. All throughout that cosmic year the universe never stopped expanding, and it's doing so now at ever increasing speeds. In this game old equals big, so if the universe were any smaller (i.e., any younger), we would not be around. To get its observer, to get its story, the cosmos had to be immense.

It took a long time, a convoluted route, and gobs of space. If the point was to get to us, wouldn't there be a simpler way? Why bother with all the rest? Why not just . . . make us?

There are many answers to that question, and they could be placed on a continuum from "weak" to "strong" anthropic principles. But I can't say if we were "an accident waiting to happen," as a character in The Story of Everything does; or if the universe "must have known we were coming," as physicist Freeman Dyson does; or if "our conscious self-reflective existence is part of God's intention," as astronomer Owen Gingerich believes.

But I am not above heeding a warning from three storybook bears (especially the big growly one). Don't assume it's all for you. The universe may be for God, it may be for living creatures, it may be for itself, but it's not for us alone. There's just too much of it. Maybe the bears are saying that other creatures count too. What matters is the good of the whole.

And yet no other creature has the consciousness and freedom that we do. If creation isn't for us, maybe at this point it's up to us. At least the planet earth is. Our decisions have affected its present condition and will matter even more in the future. Listen to nature growling and you'll end up with the Biblical notion of stewardship.

Note: You can lend your signature to a movement of those who believe the earth is up to us at TheEarthAct.org.

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COPYRIGHT (C) 2008 JOHN N. KOTRE

You Call This Friendly?

listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go
(e.e. cummings)

Let's do the math. Two bowls of porridge were wrong for Goldilocks. Two chairs were wrong, and so were two of the beds. I forgot . . . when Goldilocks sat in Baby Bear's chair, it broke. Put that chair in the "wrong" column too, making Goldilocks two for nine. Only 22% of the house she found in the woods was right for her.

How much of the cosmos is right for us? How much is wrong? You can do the math or just take a walk in space, no equipment allowed. The math would go like this. Calculate the amount of space in the universe. Calculate how much is occupied by creatures like us, or observers of any kind (SETI is having a hard time finding them). Divide the latter by the former. You'd get one of those astronomical numbers. A decimal point followed by lines of zeroes, then a 1, then the % sign. An unprotected walk in space would make the same point. It's not a "bio-friendly" universe.

Yet that's the term cosmologists use, whether they think there's a Who outside or many whats. Midway through the Goldilocks enigma--I'm still flying by the seat of my pants--I want to think about that. I want to think about words like "just right" and "benevolent." Theoretical cosmology is mathematical, and its practitioners are really smart guys, but at some point they use language--my language--and that's where I'm entitled to a say. Here are some reflections.

1. The initial conditions of the universe were just right for lots of things. They were just right for toothpaste and barges and YouTube and lower interest rates. If you're going to talk about an "anthropic" principle, said Carl Sagan, you should talk about a "lithic" principle as well, since the initial conditions of the universe were perfectly right for stones. Take any outcome of any kind, dig into its history, and of course its origins will be just right.

2.The odds will always be astronomical. In 1969 I went to a convention, walked up to a desk, and started talking to the person standing next to me. If I had arrived at that precise place a minute sooner or a minute later, the conversation would not have taken place and my life today would be very different. As far as odds go, that's just the tip of the iceberg. What had to be right, years before, for the person I met to be born? For me to be born? For his parents? For my parents? And so on. Don't be impressed by all the zeroes: any outcome of any kind has overcome incredible odds.

3. If the initial conditions were just right for good, they were just right for evil. They were just right for terror and torture, for tsunamis and Katrinas. This is a universe with mixed outcomes. If you call it benevolent, you have to call it malevolent as well. This is a problem for believers in the Who outside, a problem that goes by the name of theodicy.

Maybe it's the earth that's bio-friendly, and not the entire universe. The dinosaurs might think so, their demise having come from outer space. But what about all the other species--over 99% of the total--that have gone extinct? It seems that life on our planet proceeds by eliminating other life. There ought to be a friendlier way. And while the earth is habitable now, it won't always be, even if we take good care of it. When the sun begins to die billions of years from now, it will become a red giant, and its outer edge will reach the earth's present orbit.

I'm not in a gray wintry mood, just in a mood for perspective. I want to get the story straight. It isn't lush out there in space. It isn't a rain forest. It's a near vacuum and it can get down to three degrees Kelvin and that's really cold. To say that the universe as a whole is "bio-friendly," much less observer-friendly, is myopic. How about "bio-tolerant"? Barely bio-tolerant? Just barely? The universe had the stuff to make us, but if it's friendly, it has a funny way of showing it.

Note: Paul Davies addresses degrees of bio-friendliness on p. 174 of Cosmic Jackpot. From the multiverse point of view, he says, it is likely that our universe is "marginally," rather than "optimally," bio-friendly.

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The WHAT Outside

If there is a large stock of clothing, you're not surprised to find a suit that fits. If there are many universes, each governed by a differing set of numbers, there will be one where there is a particular set of numbers suitable to life. We are in that one. (Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, in Just Six Numbers)

Every now and then a universe happens. What's the big deal? A lot have happened, a lot are happening, and a lot more are going happen. All have different initial conditions and different laws. All are governed by different numbers. Only one set of numbers produces a universe with an observer.

Welcome to the second solution to the Goldilocks enigma. It addresses the statistical improbability of our universe without turning to divine providence. If the odds of a universe like ours are one in a gazillion, well, there are zillions of other universes out there. To use last week's analogy, there are zillions of other firing squads we know nothing about. In the vast majority of them, all the marksmen hit the target. In a few, a couple of marksmen miss. In a handful, the majority of marksmen miss. In one, they all miss. Simply the laws of probability.

What will the one man who survived the firing squad tell his grandchildren? What will be his story? "Somebody gave me a break" or "God had other plans" but not "It was an accident." He may fish for the reasons but he'll believe they're there. He will discount accident because he doesn't know about the other firing squads and cannot grasp the odds. Perhaps he just feels grateful and needs someone to thank.

Now think about the Cosmic Jackpot, which it seems we have hit. Solution #2 says it looks like someone made a conscious decision. It looks like there were reasons. It appears that someone wanted to give the universe an observer. But appearances are deceiving because we don't know about all the other universes. There may be an infinity of them, making up a multiverse. Most are sterile, but once in a great while one of them produces life and mind. Simply the laws of probability.

Solution #1 posited a Who outside the universe. Solution #2 posits many whats. It says there were houses in the woods that the story of Goldilocks forgot to mention. Nearly all were wrong for her. She chanced on the one that was right.

The multiverse theory wasn't developed to solve the Goldilocks enigma. In fact, the idea of many worlds goes back a long way. It was one of the reasons Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome in 1600. He embraced theological heresies as well, and he believed with Copernicus that the earth traveled around the sun.

Fifty years ago physicist Hugh Everett proposed a many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, in which the universe sprouts countless branches with different events occurring in each. Most physicists dismissed the idea, and Everett left physics," though his thesis advisor, John Wheeler, tried to keep his idea alive.

Today, string theory and inflationary theory have gotten physicists thinking multiverse again, proposing ways that universes happen. For some, those universes remain possibilities. (Leibniz had this idea in the 17th century, saying that God chose among the possibilities.) But others say the universes actually exist, right alongside ours. Some are pictured as bubbles popping out of an eternally inflating space. I see Goldilocks' house standing in a row of condos.

On the Goldilocks map, the multiverse position lies close to the designer position. There is no evidence for those condos, or those bubbles, or any of those other universes. If no one has seen a Who outside the universe, no one has seen a what either. The Goldilocks Enigma is about an observer who is not in a position to observe the outside.

What, then, is left for this observer? What kind of knowing? Speculation? Conjecture? Inference? If you believe the equations in the bubble universe are real, the best descriptor is faith. Faith was part of solution #1. Faith is part of #2. If the cosmos has an outside, it's seems the only way to get there.

P.S. Billy Grassie, founder of Metanexus, offers another layman's take on the multiverse here. A "cosmotheological" view can be found here.

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The WHO Outside the Universe

To my mind, there must be at the bottom of it all, not an utterly simple equation, but an utterly simple idea. And to me that idea, when we finally discover it, will be so compelling, and so inevitable, so beautiful, we will all say to each other, "How could it have ever been otherwise?" (Physicist John Archibald Wheeler)

Philosopher John Leslie approaches the puzzle of our just-right universe with a parable. A firing squad of 50 aims at one condemned man. The commander yells "Fire!" and everyone shoots. They all miss! The condemned man walks away.

What are the odds of that? No different, we are told, than the odds behind a universe that produces its own observer, as ours produced us. How do you explain either? Accident, colossal randomness? Or did agents act on purpose, with intelligent missing on the one hand, intelligent design on the other?

In The Language of God geneticist Francis Collins says it was no accident. If you conclude the soldiers missed on purpose, you have to conclude a designer designed on purpose. Collins rejects the Intelligent Design movement and its God-of-the-gaps, but he accepts the basic design argument that goes back to Aquinas and Aristotle and squares with Genesis 1. This argument leads to a Who "outside of space and time." It leads to God.

In God's Universe, astronomer Owen Gingerich travels much the same road, seeing the hand of intelligent design (but again, not Intelligent Design) in the cosmos. Both "efficient" and "final" causes are at work, he says. Why does water boil in a kettle? Is it (A) because heat causes water molecules to move around faster and then escape as gas? Or is it (B) because somebody wants some tea? Both, says Gingerich, after John Polkinghorne. (A) is the efficient cause, which science can probe. (B) is the final cause, which science cannot. When it comes to the universe, both point to a Who outside.

Where does this Who fall on the map of the Goldilocks story, the one for whom the puzzle of incredible odds is named?

Let's start with "causes." When Goldilocks discovers the just-right porridge, she doesn't ask, "How did it get here?" The question of efficient cause never crosses her mind. She is, you should excuse the expression, naively teleological. She goes right to final cause. What is the porridge for? Her actions reveal her answer.

It's the story itself that addresses efficient cause. The porridge was cooked (and the chairs and the beds made) by two adult bears. The house was their idea. They designed it. They built it from scratch. They furnished it. They created Baby Bear.

Baby Bear represents biological complexity, the kind that's most compelling to design adherents. Gingerich points out that the human brain is the most complex object in the cosmos, with far more connections than stars in the Milky Way. To Collins, the DNA that built that brain is "the language by which God spoke life into being."

All this is compatible with the tale of Goldilocks, but she's got something that we do not. She's been outside her just-right house. We have not. We can't get to the edge of the universe any more than we can get to its center. There isn't a wall to poke our heads through. But in the argument from design, and in the traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, there is indeed an edge. There is an outside.

How can we know it? Take a leap of faith, say Collins and Gingerich. Make it reasonable, but take it. Both men are Christians.

Keep their answer in mind when you read next week's solution to the Goldilocks enigma. It doesn't involve a Who but a what--many whats, in fact. They're not deities but still they're out there. The same question will loom: How can we know the outside?

P.S. Another scientist who gives the answer Who to the Goldilocks enigma is Gerald Schroeder. You can learn about his work, and the opening quote from John Archibald Wheeler, here.

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Goldilocks Comes to Cosmology

"Listen to this. Space and time shoot out from a point. In a matter of seconds, a universe is formed. It expands and expands. And then, in some remote corner, it drops a speck of consciousness. It spills a little subjectivity. A touch of soul. Weird, eh?" (from The Story of Everything, Ch. 25)

You know the tale. A little girl is walking in the woods and comes upon a house. She knocks on the door but gets no answer, so she walks in and looks around. On the kitchen table she finds three bowls of porridge. One is too hot for her taste, one is too cold, but the third is just right. In another room she tries out the chairs. A couple are too big, but again, one is just right. Then it's the beds--one too hard, one too soft, one just right. In fact, the third bed is so right that the little girl falls asleep in it, her tummy full of porridge.

You may know the story of Goldilocks, but you may not know that it's found a home in cosmology. That's because theoreticians are struck by a weird coincidence: the initial state of the universe, nearly 14 billion years ago, was also just right--just right for us, that is. It was just right to produce observers of the universe long after its beginning. Just right to "drop a speck of consciousness." Had the value of any physical constants been off by a hair, we would not be around.

For the record, this coincidence is usually called the anthropic principle, although the man who coined the term, theoretical physicist Brandon Carter, later regretted it. Early treatments of the subject include Carter's own, which suggested that the basic laws of the universe were fine tuned for life, Martin Rees's Just Six Numbers, and The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John Barrow and Frank Tipler. Recent treatments include Paul Davies' Cosmic Jackpot and God's Universe by Owen Gingerich. It's Davies who likes to talk about the "Goldilocks enigma."

What was so finely tuned in the beginning? Energy from the Big Bang, to start with. Had it been greater, matter would have rushed apart too fast for stars and galaxies to form. Had it been less, gravity would have pulled the matter back and the universe would have collapsed. "If the rate of expansion one second after the big bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before it ever reached its present size," wrote Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time. The rate had to be that precise . . . and it was.

The list of coincidences can get pretty long. The speed of light was precisely right. So were the strengths of the "fundamental" forces--gravity, electromagnetism, and two confined to the nuclei of atoms. Had any been off by 1 or 2%, we would not be here. According to Davies, the "biggest fix" of all involves dark energy, the name given to whatever drives galaxies apart at an accelerating rate. The odds of its value being just right? Four hundred flips of a coin. If you want a universe that produces us, he says, they all have to come up heads.

And they did. Why? That's the Goldilocks enigma.

I wonder what was in Goldilocks' mind when she first looked around the house she had found. Did she think that someone had cooked the porridge just for her? And what about us? Should we think that someone has cooked the books on our behalf?

The internet is full of travelers discussing this question. But no one has made the trip with Goldilocks, as I will do in the weeks ahead. Her story, the whole of it, has something to offer. Goldilocks has been outside her just-right house. She was, in fact, born there. Not us. We were born inside the universe, we grew up inside, and we remain there. There are no windows in this house of ours. There are no doors. We don't even know if our universe has an outside.

Point of view matters in this enigma. It helps to think "outside the box," but in this case we're in the box and can't get out. Standing where we are--and with no windows--we ask, why are we at home in this cosmos of ours? Why do we find those settings on the dials? And what about the porridge?

P.S. For a short version of the Goldilocks story, click here. For a longer version, with history, annotations and variants, click here. For a theologian's view of the anthropic principle, try this by Nancey Murphy; it's from The Global Spiral, an e-publication of Metanexus Institute.

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