The Symbiotic Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos

In God and the Astronomers, Robert Jastrow brilliantly summed up our knowledge about ourselves and the universe. He reasoned that the grand climb of science had brought scientists to a hilltop confronting ultimate Mysterya hilltop that had already been crowded by theologians for centuries. No less brilliantly, Greenstein, Amherst astronomy professor, here updates Jastrow's effort. He describes the ""coincidences'' scientists have observed in recent years in the bizarre world of subatomic particles, quantum mechanics itself and the Big Bang theory of cosmic origin and destiny. Among these are the two separate ``resonances'' between nuclei found in ``red giant'' stars, allowing the synthesis of heavy elements necessary for ``life''; the precisely equal charges of the electron and the proton; the symmetry of matter and anti-matter, etc. These conditions of physical nature lead him to extrapolate the Anthropic Principle, today largely rejected, and argue his view of the universe as ``symbiotic,'' as evidenced by the fact that we exist, and that the cosmos has been ``delicately and precisely attuned'' from the moment of the Big Bang. This is bold metaphysics, to which some will say Amen. Photos. BOMC alternate. (February 18)