I think our entire universe is a giant mathematical structure that we are a part of. Professor Max Tegmark
For me Math is a window on our universe. It’s the masterkey to understanding what’s out there. Professor Max Tegmark
This, now, is the judgement of our scientific age – the third reaction of man upon the universe! This universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent. John H Holmes, The Sensible Man’s View of Religion, 1932
The significance of man is that he is part of the universe that asks the question, What is the significance of Man? He alone can stand apart imaginatively and, regarding himself and the universe in their eternal aspects, pronounce a judgment: The significance of man is that he is insignificant and is aware of it. Carl Becker, Progress and Power, 1936
I formulated the Strong Anthropic Principle: this says our universe must have those properties that allow intelligent life to develop in it at some stage. Brendon Carter
So far there’s no argument – in the form Carter originally put it the Weak Anthropic Principle merely says that we are observing the universe from the viewpoint of a very particular species – man. Professor Frank Tipler, Tulane University
The starting point of these ideas is to decide how important or unimportant mankind – human beings – are in the scheme of things. And there’s a very remarkable discovery of the last few years which at first sight suggests that human beings are very important. And that’s what we call the Fine Tuning of the universe. Professor Dennis Sciama, Cambridge University
Each one of us is made from mere matter. Yet we are matter with curiosity ... Why are we here? Brian Cox, Human Universe II: Why Are We Here? BBC 2014
We appear to live on a perfect planet in a perfect universe. It feels as if it’s made for us. The Earth orbits at just the right distance around just the right star with the temperatures on its surface to be just right for liquid water to exist. ibid.
We live in a universe that’s expanding at just the right rate. ibid.
‘The gods are later than creation.’ ibid. Vadic verse
Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence. Alan Wilson Watts
The universe that we see has to be big in order for us to be here. Dr Paul Davis
The entire universe seems unreasonably suited to the existence of life. Almost contrived. We might say a put up job. Dr Paul Davies
The nice thing about John Wheeler’s Participatory Anthropic Principle is that Time isn’t a barrier. Dr Paul Davies
Finally, from what we now know about the cosmos, to think that all this was created for just one species among the tens of millions of species who live on one planet circling one of a couple of hundred billion stars that are located in one galaxy among hundreds of billions of galaxies, all of which are in one universe among perhaps an infinite number of universes all nestled within a grand cosmic multiverse, is provincially insular and anthropocentrically blinkered. Which is more likely? That the universe was designed just for us, or that we see the universe as having been designed just for us? Michael Shermer, Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design
On Earth all the conditions are just right for life. How the Universe Works s2e8: Birth of the Earth, Discovery 2012
Life such as ours needs a planet with the right temperature and size, a stabilizing moon, a protective magnetic field and just the right quantity of water – the conditions must be perfect. ibid.
I should not exist. I was an accident. A random convergence of technologies. I was never meant to be. Star Trek: Voyager s5e2: Drone, One to Seven of Nine
The argument can be used to explain why the conditions happen to be just right for the existence of (intelligent) life on the Earth at the present time. For if they were not just right, then we should not have found ourselves to be here now, but somewhere else, at some other appropriate time. This principle was used very effectively by Brandon Carter and Robert Dicke to resolve an issue that had puzzled physicists for a good many years. The issue concerned various striking numerical relations that are observed to hold between the physical constants (the gravitational constant, the mass of the proton, the age of the universe, etc.). A puzzling aspect of this was that some of the relations hold only at the present epoch in the Earth’s history, so we appear, coincidentally, to be living at a very special time (give or take a few million years!). This was later explained, by Carter and Dicke, by the fact that this epoch coincided with the lifetime of what are called main-sequence stars, such as the Sun. At any other epoch, so the argument ran, there would be no intelligent life around in order to measure the physical constants in question – so the coincidence had to hold, simply because there would be intelligent life around only at the particular time that the coincidence did hold! Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind ch10
Many ‘anthropic principles’ are simply confused. Some, especially those drawing inspiration from Brandon Carter’s seminal papers, are sound, but ... they are too weak to do any real scientific work. In particular, I argue that existing methodology does not permit any observational consequences to be derived from contemporary cosmological theories, though these theories quite plainly can be and are being tested empirically by astronomers. What is needed to bridge this methodological gap is a more adequate formulation of how observation selection effects are to be taken into account. Nick Bostrom, Anthropic Bias
It all goes to show just how narrow and fragile the universal balance is that allows us to exist in the first place. Hannah Fry, Size Matters II: That Sinking Feeling, BBC 2018
It’s known as the Theory of the Fine-Tuned Universe: it holds that the exact conditions that hold for the creation of life are so precise that they could not randomly have appeared. Proving God, History 2020
The Fine Structure Constant: It sits at the heart of Feynman’s theoretical success … The strength of electromagnetism … Where does this number come from? And it is not alone … The constants of nature are clearly central to all physics … How are we here? The Entire History of the Universe e7: Why is the Universe Perfect?
Where does these constants come from? Does the universe have to be this way? ibid.
What if the rules of the universe were different? ibid.