Not exactly about anthropic principle.
I strongly believe in enormous, unrevealed to-day, power of adaptation to environmental challenges.
I strongly believe in enormous, unrevealed to-day, power of adaptation to environmental challenges.
And it is not that I doubt in divine intervention into creation of our life as we know it. I am not biologist by background. I speak freely only from position of my life's observations, reflections and educated guess. Common sense, too.
Life's a mystery. Very meaningful, powerful beyond our boldest expectations. And I think that due to its intrinsic feature, it is capable of wildest acts of change. All in order to sustain, maintain. To stay ALIVE. It does not mean that if you cast living animal into cosmic vacuum it'll survive, no, by no means. Yet, on our planetary scale, it might explain why there might be life on other planets that do not draw or attention for there's perhaps no water or carbon, or oxygen. I have no paradigm, or my mind is not fixed on known-so-far facts and expectations. Like I said, I am an old school.
Being raised on books by great Stanislaw Lem, I have in my mind a thought seeded decades ago. It's one of those "what if's." I am just full of doubts whether we would, in the world as we know it, be able to recognize that it is actually life what we're looking at. I can with no problems think that somewhere there is some life, maybe even intelligent, developed in other regions that is resulting from "organic" chemistry of silicone, sulfur or other “unexpected” elements that we ignore or do not focus too much till now. Plus, we're fixed on chemistry outcomes resulting from Earth's gravity force of force that had been "always" as strong as that of now. I cannot exactly imagine how different chemistry in no- or low- gravity environment results could be. But I can assure you that I am ready to believe it can be shockingly "other". I heard once a science wizard lecturing in the net about expectations towards cosmos. I remember his main statement. Knowing what we already observe, I come to conclusion that COSMOS SHOULD BE MUCH WEIRDER than we observe to-day.
In Lem's works, unrecognized or unmatched forms of life get tangled, spliced. Great food for thought. One of biggest examples is his "Fiasco". Feel encouraged to find it. Might seem boring but it builds up to finale. Believe me.
From my life's experience, I must sadly sate that as humanity, even in its brightest, highly illuminated examples of modern scientists, we are but self-confident bunch of short-sighted creatures floating in a plankton of this Planet. As a rule, it is mainly nature scientists to blame or accuse of that blind attitude. Bit different (luckily for us all) is with representatives of fundamental disciplines of Science.
But those nature freaks? Poor fellows. On one hand, I feel sorry for them and their pathetic closeness, even blindness. On other hand, I feel furious because of the fact that they use their media and social and institutional power of influence to poison cognitive minds, hungry for knowledge and progress. I repeat, I am not nature scientist. Yet, I feel and strongly believe that there is something colossally, cosmically wrong with the view that is popularized by those individuals, claiming that they have the most to say on the selected subjects. That they know The Answer. On radio, I listened once an audition about aspects of landing on our Moon. The scientist there remembered that his professor lady at a university somewhere was arguing and convincing him that all of the craters on the Moon’s surface result from volcanic activity. Based on what she said that? Simply because craters are created by volcanos. We know instinctively that that opinion was completely wrong, yet that idiotically stubborn teacher lady was using her position to force young mind into dangerous thinking. Why? Just because she could.
It’s toxic process .We know that all craters that we can see on the Moon result from impact, from a collision with cosmic debris that also Earth experiences. I do not mid that people teach imperfect knowledge. But I strongly object their bullet-headiness when it comes to propagating their view as the only proper attitude worth or allowed to be transmitted to others. I believe it was Sir Karl Popper that introduced to contemporary science the thesis that ultimate confirmation of ANY scientific theory is not possible. We are just living among theories that are best so far. But there’s no guarantee that some sunny day, someone somewhere would not find a single argument to abolish the theory and change it. Till someone finds even better shape. I think that this process was best observed since beginning of 20th century in fundamental sciences. Result is enormously fast progress and development in areas of both macro and subatomic sciences. But “nature sciences”, at least in its mass transmitted today by the media, are by far away from catching up. Only very few bright people dare not to be short-sighted. For all the others it is still unthinkable to stand apart and try to see things a bit broader, from a different perspective. There’s no guarantee that liquid water is a must for life in outer space. But it is broadcasted as revelation and a sure thing. Truth is, however, that it’s the only form of life that we experienced and examined so far. But I would not be so sure that it must be the only model. Even stranger, our feeling of time flowing. I was once reading Terry Pratchett’s book in which he presented aside two extreme opposite life forms: a mayfly which lives only for one day, and fairy tree that was called counting pine. When he depicted mayflies, he showed those organisms as population of humming in a sort of cloud of very young and older insects discussing that sun is no longer as good as it was some hours ago, and it would be much better if younger mayflies showed more respect to older ones. All that was happening within lifetime of one generation who did not have slightest clue that time and its perception can be spanned for much more that the tine fragment on the time axis that circa one day long. Simple organisms, short life. Problems on a scale of extremely short existence. On another pole, there were these counting pines whose life lasted thousands of years. Those, in turn were talking with strong longing for a neighbor glacier that was here for millennia and then, “suddenly” walked away. By the way, the dialogue on that subject consisted of few sentences said but lasted seventeen years in human scale but for the peurpose of book reading was shortened for the readers. :) One might say, why you talk about fairytales and nonsenses quoted from fantasy book? What has it to do with quality of nature science theses presented by serious and respected scientists? Why? Because although organisms and their behavior are purely fairy, but for my mind they enlarge the thought's horizon and propose alternative perspective. Our perception of time is immanently bound with rotation speed of Earth, The only inhabited planet know so far. We as people are very egocentric and anthropic in our understanding of everything around us. And almost nobody dares to assume that there might be life that perceives time differently than humanity. Maybe its organisms life mayflies living much shorter than we. In such case, contact with extraterrestrial life, or matching two "time windows" to enable contact would be muuuuch more difficult. And opposite scenario, when some life form develops, grows and communicates much slower than us, I would not be surprised if life on Earth would be just overlooked by the slow growers and/or attempt to communicate would not be recognized by the very humanity for the alien longevity, comparing to human life. Other aspect is evolution of alternative life form would come to a point of developing formsand means of communication with use of electromagnetic wave based technologies. We today search our night skies hoping that someone would flash to us or send to us a recognizable radio signal. Again, this is because it is based on our limited, shortsighted perception. Optimistically assuming that all other life forms in outer spaces, if exist, must have almost identical speed of development, perception of time flow and more or less same path of technology and development as ourselves.
