Tuesday, May 3, 2016

The Privileged Planet, Guillermo Gonzalez, Jay W. Richards, c. 2004

Chapter 1: Wonderful Eclipses

Perhaps that was the necessary condition of planetary life: your Sun must fit your Moon. -- Martin Amis

Chapter 2: At Home On A Data Recorder

Chapter 3: Peering Down

Plate tectonics plays at least three crucial roles in maintaining animal life -- it may be that plate tectonics is the central requirement for life on a planet and that it is necessary for keeping a world supplied with water. -- Peter D Ward and Donald Brownlee

Chapter 4: Peering Up

The combined circumstances that we live on Earth and are able to see stars -- that the conditions necessary for life do not exclude those necessary for vision, and vice versa -- is a remarkably improbable one. -- Hans Blumenberg

Chapter 5: The Pale Blue Dot In Relief

Chapter 6: Our Helpful Neighbors

At each step along the way, the Solar System has served as a perspicacious teacher, posing questions just difficult enough to prompt new observations and calculations that have led to fresh insights, but not so difficult that any further study becomes mired in a morass of confusing detail. -- Ivars Peterson

Chapter 7: Star Probes

Chapter 8: Our Galactic Habitat

Chapter 9: Our Place in Cosmic Time

The progress made in our understanding of the universe during the twentieth century is nothing short of stunning. -- Michael S. Turner

Chapter 10: A Universe Fine-Tunes for Live and Discovery

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. -- Paul Davies

Chapter 11: The Revisionist History of the Copernican Revolution

If Copernicus taught us the lesson that we are not at the center of things, our present picture of the universe rubs it in. -- Robert Kirshner

Chapter 12: The Copernican Principle

Because of the reflection of sunlight ... the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world ... -- Carl Sagan

Don't you just love the Sagan alliteration in that last quote?

Chapter 13: The Anthropic Disclaimer

The next battle of the Copernican revolution is thrust upon us. Just as our planet has no special status within our Solar System,and our Solar System has no special location within the universe, our universe has no special status within the vast cosmic melange of universes that comprise our multiverse. -- Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin

I can't wait to re-read this chapter.

Chapter 14: SETI and the Unraveling of The Copernican Principle


Chapter 15: A Universe Designed for Discovery

Chapter 16: The Skeptical Rejoinder

A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question. -- Charles Darwin

I wish the warmists would accept that. I have.

Conclusion: Reading the Book of Nature


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