In their book, entitled The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, John Barrow and Frank Tipler give an excellent example of a fake principle, in the sense that it is entirely based on pseudo-scientific and/or false statements. Here I comment on the issue.
1. Introduction
Prof. Dr. John Barrow and Prof. Dr. Frank Tipler are the noble authors of a thick and heavy volume entitled The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Barrow and Tipler 1986). They wrote indeed an erudite book with innumerable bibliographical references and endless quotations.
But that is not enough. Some say it is just thick, others, rather offensively, thick as a brick...
The principle itself is not their idea, though. It was put forward in 1973 by the cosmologist Brandon Carter (1974), during the celebration of Copernicus' 500th birthday, marked by IAU Symposium No. 63. An interesting, useful and thorough account of the principle and related topics are easily available from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle. Everyone should, on the other hand, read Carter's paper, which is indeed worth the time spent. I would not say the same concerning Barrow and Tipler's collection of commented quotations. Sorry.
I, myself, think the anthropic principle is a superb piece of pseudo-scientific reasoning and, in what follows, I digress a little bit about that.
Let's start with some bold statements (BSs).
2. Why is it pseudo-science?
Which is another expression for fake science.
It is pseudo-science because it rests heavily upon unproved cosmology --- the Big Bang Dark model.
It is fake because it rests upon false statements about another scientists' works. As an appropriate example let us contemplate what the authors see in Hubble's seminal work on the redshift-distance relation (Hubble 1929).
On their page 2, one reads
"Hubble's classic discovery that the Universe is in a dynamic state of expansion reveals that its size is inextricably bound up with its age"This is a typical Barrow-Tipler's construction. A false statement leading to an inconsistent conclusion. It is obvious that Hubble did not discovered that the universe is in a dynamic state of whatever. Hubble discovered a linear relation between redshifts and distances of extragalactic nebulae (galaxies). Can we say more without violating the most sacred rules of science-making? I really don't think so. As a consequence, the conclusion that follows is irrelevant. At the present point in time there is no guarantee, scientific guarantee, that the universe is finite in age, which is implied by Barrow-Tipler's interpretation of Hubble's work. And which is a crucial idea in the formulation of the principle.
Of course, a
principle of nature cannot be built upon unproved ideas.
3. Conclusion
It is not healthy, wealthy and wise to buy books by the pound.
4. References
Barrow, J.D. & Tipler, F.J. 1986, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford University Press, Oxford)
Carter, B. 1974, Large number coincidences and the anthropic principle in cosmology, in Confrontation of cosmological theories with observational data, IAU Symposium No. 63, Krakow, Poland, September 10-12, 1973. ed. M.S. Longair, D. Reidel Publishing, Dordrecht, p. 291-298
Hubble, E.P. 1929, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 15, 168
* For more short comments on modern cosmology check at the following address: www.fisica.ufmg.br/~dsoares/notices-e.htm). Back.