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The anthropic principle is an unfortunate name as it implies something about humanity.

Paul Davies

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Paul Davies
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: April 22
Cosmologist
Physicist
University Teacher
Writer
London
England
Paul Charles William Davies
Names
Something
Implies
Unfortunate
Principle
Principles
Name
Humanity

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My feeling is that scientific method has the power to account for and interlink all phenomena in the universe, including its origin, using the laws of nature. But that still leaves the laws unexplained.
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To expect alien technology to be just a few decades ahead of ours is too incredible to be taken seriously.
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Perhaps the best motivation for going to Mars is political. It is obvious that no single nation currently has either the will or the resources to do it alone, but a consortium of nations and space agencies could achieve it within 20 years.
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I always look on the black side of life. That way, you won't be disappointed and I'm cheerful if it doesn't work out. I'm a cheerful pessimist.
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I think if we're going to send messages to the stars then it needs a great deal of thought that it's something that should involve the entire not only scientific community, but the entire world community. We need to think very carefully indeed.
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The way life manages information involves a logical structure that differs fundamentally from mere complex chemistry. Therefore chemistry alone will not explain life's origin, any more than a study of silicon, copper and plastic will explain how a computer can execute a program.
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There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all. . . It seems as though somebody has fine tuned nature's numbers to make the Universe. . . The impression of design is overwhelming.
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Cosmologists have attempted to account for the day-to-day laws you find in textbooks in terms of fundamental 'superlaws,' but the superlaws themselves must still be accepted as brute facts. So maybe the ultimate laws of nature will always be off-limits to science.
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We know that within the solar system is very unlikely there will be anything more advanced than microbial life, but if we think outside the solar system and then, the distances are, of course, immense, then there could be Earth-like planets with more advanced form of life.
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The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is something behind it all is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists.
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If we knew we were not alone in the universe it would have a very, very deep impact on our worldview, on our understanding of our place in the universe.
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In the frantic search for an elusive 'cure,' few researchers stand back and ask a very basic question: why does cancer exist? What is its place in the grand story of life?
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General relativity is the cornerstone of cosmology and astrophysics. It has also provided the conceptual basis for string theory and other attempts to unify all the forces of nature in terms of geometrical structures.
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The thing about lucid dreams is that it's not like the real world where you are constrained by all sorts of things, including the laws of physics - you can do magic.
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The Goldilocks Enigma is the idea that everything in the universe is just right for life, like the porridge in the fairy tale.
Paul Davies
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The language of chemistry simply does not mesh with that of biology. Chemistry is about substances and how they react, whereas biology appeals to concepts such as information and organisation. Informational narratives permeate biology.
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No attempt to explain the world, either scientifically or theologically, can be considered successful until it accounts for the paradoxical conjunction of the temporal and the atemporal, of being and becoming. And no subject conforms this paradoical conjuction more starkly than the origin of the universe.
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The secret of life does not lie in its chemical basis . . . Life succeeds precisely because it evades chemical imperatives.
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An argument often given for why Earth couldn't host another form of life is that once the life we know became established, it would have eliminated any competition through natural selection. But if another form of life were confined to its own niche, there would be little direct competition with regular life.
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It may seem bizarre, but in my opinion science offers a surer path to God than religion.
Paul Davies