The anthropic principle has gained much popularity among cosmologists. But, faced with a need for historical explanation, biologists are bound to find it a cop-out.
Article PDF
References
Henderson, L. J. The Fitness of the Environment (Smith, Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1913).
Barrow, J. D. & Tipler, F. J. The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Clarendon, Oxford, 1986).
Carter, B. in Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with Observation (ed. Longair, M. S.) (Reidel, 1974).
Smolin, L. Class. Quantum Grav. 9, 173–191 (1992).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Smith, J., Szathmáry, E. On the likelihood of habitable worlds. Nature 384, 107 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1038/384107a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/384107a0
This article is cited by
-
Is God an Adaptation?
Philosophia (2011)
