Against the Anthropic Principle: The Biological Principle

Is there life in the universe, or perhaps the correct question is whether there is a universe in life? A methodological note on the tendency of the philosophy of science towards physics instead of biology

The expulsion from Eden as a forceful removal from a state of homeostasis - and stagnation (Source)

How much should we be surprised by global warming? Anyone familiar with the tumultuous geological history of Earth sees that the system's proximity to the extinction boundary is not a bug - but a feature. Without a global system close to the edge of chaos, the many leaps in the complexity of life would never have occurred, and evolution would have sunk into billions of years of stagnation. Only catastrophe awakens the evolutionary algorithm of local optimization from its dogmatic slumber.

But if we project from Earth's history to the history of the universe, we can look at the challenges of astrophysics in a new way. In general, the visible universe as a system is not close to the edge of chaos, and in fact tends very much towards stagnation, and we do not see events of instability and extinction on a large cosmic scale since its creation. Therefore, perhaps it is no wonder that life is not very common in it as a phenomenon, at least in visible matter. In fact, it seems that the universe tends very much towards precise tuning and homeostasis, in a way that physical models cannot explain, to such an extent that very problematic hypotheses have been proposed philosophically and scientifically, such as the multiverse hypothesis, or alternatively the anthropic principle. Indeed, one should be very surprised by the fine and unexplained tuning of a system if it is an unplanned physical system, but if it is a biological system, or alternatively an ecological one, then homeostasis is a basic phenomenon. If so, how do we know, apart from our preconception, that the leading shaping paradigm in the cosmos is physics, and not biology?

How do we know, for example, that the universe is not a living creature, for instance a kind of cell on a cosmic scale, and that the Big Bang is not the mode of reproduction of universes, and that all the fine-tuning of the universe does not stem from biological balance on a cosmic scale? After all, we would not be surprised by a marvelous balance, with negligible physical probability, within a living system. Alternatively, how do we know that life is not a significant phenomenon in the universe with an impact on a cosmic scale, perhaps even from its beginning, for example in dark matter, or in dark energy, and that the relatively stable state and very far from catastrophe of the universe system - and on the other hand completely implausible - does not stem from tunings to which ecological systems tend? Do we know enough about dark matter to rule out the prevalence of life in it?

And perhaps life in one of the types of dark matter (where does the assumption that there is only one come from?) has significant advantages over life in visible matter, and therefore every significant civilization copies itself to one of the dark matters, and this is the explanation for the Fermi paradox? It's enough that there is some computational advantage in one of these dark matter types over our matter (which constitutes only 5% of the universe), and this effect will be drastic. We do not know 95% of the universe, so how do we know that life is not common in it, when we know that it can form spontaneously, and that then it is very difficult to get rid of it and it spreads? And could there be a connection between the universal phenomenon of the expansion and growth of life and the expansion and growth of the universe? After all, we know that there is an unexplained element of acceleration in the growth of the universe, contrary to all known physical logic, which created the fiction that has been dubbed "dark energy". Is it possible that there is an organizational force of creating complexity that pushes the universe forward, and dark energy is not "just" energy? Our assumption that biology only happens in the "small" and that only physics happens in the "big" - has nothing to rely on, and biological thinking is no less reasonable and philosophically worthy than speculations like the multiverse or intelligent design.

Therefore, instead of the anthropic principle, we propose the biological principle. As much as a system exhibits implausible and unexplained balances, and resistant to changes, the most plausible explanation known to us is that it is a biological system. In the current state of scientific knowledge, the hypothesis that the universe is a biological phenomenon is no less plausible than it being a pure physical phenomenon, contrary to the scientific ideology that assumes the debate on the vitality of the world was settled long ago - and the world is dead.

And for those who struggle with the word "life", we will offer the following thought experiment, which is much more plausible than the pure physical explanations currently offered for the formation of a miraculously tuned universe (see the fine-structure constant...): Out of all the universes in the landscape of possible universes, almost all of them do not develop or are quickly destroyed, because their natural constants are not tuned like ours. And if we assume that a universe passes on its laws of nature to universes created from it, we have obtained the mechanism of natural selection and astro-evolution, and therefore it is no wonder that our universe is miraculously tuned.