ABSTRACT
What has the presence of human beings to do with the laws of nature? According to the anthropic principle, the latter can be explained in terms of the former. In fact, because there is more than one version of it, the anthropic principle offers two explanations. One version, the weak anthropic principle, states in effect that we should expect to discover laws of nature which are compatible with the existence of human observers. This was the principle introduced in the previous chapter. The other version, the strong anthropic principle, suggests something far more controversial. It goes as follows:
The universe had to be such as to permit the emergence of observers in it at some stage.
