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Puppy Dogs' Tails


What are little boys made of?
"Snips and snails, and puppy dogs' tails
That's what little boys are made of!"
What are little girls made of?
"Sugar and spice and all things nice
That's what little girls are made of!"

One of the strangest experiences of my life was auditing a course in the Astronomy Department at the University of Arizona, because I had been reading about a goofy idea called, "The Anthropic Principle".  It goes something like this:  

In order to observe the world around us, the world must be somehow compatible with the conscious life that is observing it.  Or, to put it another way, the world around us has to be such that it can accomodate conscious life.  

To put it in a somewhat more tangled way, it is to say that if we can observe anything, that thing has to be somewhat compatible with a life that can observe.  Or, conditions that can be observed in a universe must allow for an observer to exist.  

Whoof!  

Diddling around with the idea gets awfully close to suggesting that the world has to be the way it is because, if it weren't, we could not observe it, and what is an observer who cannot observe anything?  See?  Things have to be the way they are!  What a grand design!  What a grand designer!  What a sneaky way to try to sneak creationism into the laboratory, or into a class on cosmology!

If girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice, the world must be compatible with sugar and spice and all things nice.  Unless it is made of snips and snails and puppy dogs' tails, in which case girls probably would not notice it.  What do girls know of snips and snails and puppy dogs' tails?  Would they know a puppy dog's tail if they saw one?  

If you stand an argument on its head, you are certain to get things upside down.  The reason why conditions on earth are compatible with human life is because conditions on earth have produced (or evolved) human life.  What would be astounding would be for a universe of snips and snails and puppy dogs' tails to produce little girls.  Or for boys to show up in a world of sugar and spice and all things nice.   What we do know is that the world is compatible with both.  We can see that.  We are like that.  We are that.  

There are, undoubtedly, worlds we cannot observe.  But that the world we see and know is amazingly compatible with life as we know it ought not to surprise us.  What would be a surprise would be . . .  

I cannot imagine what it might be.  Something like the anthropic principle, I guess.  Nice, maybe, but from some other universe.  Like a puppy dog's tail that isn't there.  

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