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Very cautious review of book on fine tuning vs the multiverse

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A Fortunate Universe The book is Geraint F. Lewis and Luke A. Barnes, A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos: From reviewer Yann Benetreau-Dupin at physics archiv:

There are in fact two ways to read this book. One is to see it as a response to Victor Stenger’s 2011 book The Fallacy of Fine-tuning: Why the Universe is Not Designed for Us. On this reading, A Fortunate Universe is a popular-level adaptation of Barnes’s article (Barnes, 2012) with a similar title.2 A second way to read this book is as a didactic work. On this second account, the issue of the fine-tuning of the universe for life is an opportunity to survey a vast array of facts, theories, and problems in cosmology and in physics more generally. The fruitful premise that fuels the whole exposition is simple: Would the universe be different—and if so, how—if the laws and constants of physics as we know them were only slightly different? Would life be possible? What additional, missing physics—or other sorts of concept perhaps—could better explain life in the universe? More.

The author is suitably cautious in an age when we are still allowed to wonder but academic thugs lurk on every corner.

See also: What becomes of science when the evidence does not matter?

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