Pantheism and the Anthropic Principle

Pantheism symbols

Pantheism is the belief that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent God, or that the Universe (or Nature) is identical with divinity. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal god or a anthropomorphic god.

The Universal Pantheist Society and the World Pantheist Movement (WPM) are two organizations of people associated with pantheism.

The Copernican principle, named after Nicolaus Copernicus, states that the Earth is not the center of the universe. Copernicus was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology. The Anthropic Principle was first raised by Brandon Carter in 1973 in reaction to the Copernican principle. Carter stated “Although our situation is not necessarily central, it is inevitably privileged to some extent”. The anthropic principle has given rise to some confusion and controversy, partly because the phrase has been applied to several distinct ideas.

The anthropic principle is related to the fundamental parameters, that is the dimensionless physical constants and the initial conditions for the Big Bang. Connections between physical constants that seem to be necessary for the existence of life in the universe are called the anthropic coincidences. Many examples of claimed anthropic coincidences can be found in the literature. The constants of nature seem to be extraordinarily fine-tuned for the production of life. Opponents to this theory argue that the universe is less fine-tuned than often claimed or that there is not one universe, but a whole infinite ensemble of universes with all possible fundamental parameters, the multiverse.

Evo Devo Universe

Evo Devo Universe (EDU) is a global community of theoretical and applied physicists, chemists, biologists, cognitive and social scientists, computer scientists, technologists, philosophers, information theorists, complexity scholars and systems theorists who are interested in better characterizing the relationship and difference between evolutionary and developmental processes in the universe and its subsystems. The project originated from John Smart and Clément Vidal in January 2008.

The first international EDU conference was held in Paris in October 2008. The second international EDU conference is planned in 2013 at the East Coast, USA.

EDU is looking for researchers to collaborate on investigating on free energy rate density (FERD) and its larger human implications, as described in a brief research project overview, created by Clément Vidal.

Free Energy Rate Density and STEM Compression

A metric to characterize the complexity of physical, biological and cultural systems in the universe has been proposed by Eric Chaisson. It is called Free Energy Rate Density (FERD). The Evo Devo Universe Community is looking for researchers to collaborate on investigating FERD and its larger human implications.

Birds have higher energy rate densities, compared to humans, probably because they operate in 3 dimensions.

An idea that the most complex of the universe’s extant systems at any time  use progressively less space, time, energy and matter to create the next level of complexity in their evolutionary development has been advocated by John Smart. The concept is called STEM compression (formerly MEST compression).

A list of links to websites dealing with FERD and STEM is shown hereafter :

Big History and ChronoZoom

Last update : July 17, 2013
Big History is a field of historical study that examines history on large scales across long time frames through a multidisciplinary approach, to understand the integrated history of the cosmos, earth, life, and humanity, using the best available empirical evidence and scholarly methods. Big History evolved from interdisciplinary studies in the mid-20th century, some of the first efforts were Cosmic Evolution at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard University and Universal History in the Soviet Union.

An International Big History Association (IBHA) was founded in 2010. The same year, Walter Alvarez and Roland Saekow from the department of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of California, Berkeley, developed ChronoZoom, an online program that visualizes time on the broadest possible scale from the Big Bang to the present day. A beta version of ChromoZoom 2 in HTML5 was released in March 2012 by Outercurve Foundation, a non-profit organization that supports open-source software.

In 2011, Bill Gates and David Christian started The Big History Project to enable the global teaching of big history. Seven schools have been selected for the initial classroom pilot phase of the project. IBHA is one of the partners of the project. Educators can register to participate in the beta program of the Big History Project. At the TED talks in March 2011, David Christian narrated a complete history of the universe, from the Big Bang to the Internet, in a riveting 18 minutes.

Macquaire University has launched a Big History Institute as part of the Big History Project. Big History is teached since 1994 at the University of Amsterdam by Fred Spier.

A list of links to great websites illustrating different epochs (particulate, galactic, stellar, planetary, chemical, biological, culturel) of the Big History is shown hereafter :