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194 universe may be less favorable to life and intelligence than ours; others may be more favorable. Sagan popularized a related concept: the assumption of mediocrity. We humans are neither the most advanced or the least advanced of the uni- verse’s life-forms. We are not the smartest of the universe’s intelligent creatures, nor are we likely to have the most advanced science or the most powerful technologies. Others have argued that we have gone too far in claiming that there is nothing special about the time and place in which we live. The modern philosophical counterargument to the Copernican Principle is the Anthropic Principle, which proposes that it is possible for an observer’s time and place to be unique, if the unique factor is necessary in order for there to be an observer in the first place. The pioneer of this argument was Brandon Carter, who proposed it in reaction to “exaggerated subservience to the Copernican principle.””* Barrow and Tipler proposed a definition of the “Weak” Anthropic Prin- ciple. The observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable; they take on values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and by the require- ment that the universe be old enough for it to have already done so.* The Anthropic Principle has other implications. It implies multiple uni- verses—or multiple regions within a single universe—in which parameters like the cosmological constant have different values, making the laws of physics different. Our universe would be peculiar because humans can exist only in those rare universes or regions with tiny cosmological constants.’° The anthropic approach also suggests that such physical phenomena as dark energy and the Higgs particle mass have different values in different parts of the universe; we live in a region where they are small enough to make life possible. If this is the case, many other properties of the universe that we usually consider fundamental, such as the mass and charge of the electron, may be environmental accidents.”° Barrow and Tipler argued that we already have seen the first failure of the Copernican Principle. The discovery of the cosmological background radiation in 1965 showed that the universe is changing with time. The epoch in which we live is special in permitting the evolution of carbon life.*” The Weak Anthropic Principle has been extended by proposals for a Strong Anthropic Principle. To Barrow and Tipler, the strong version meant that the Universe must have those properties which allow life to develop in it at some stage in its history. They proposed a Final Anthropic Principle: Intelligent information processing must come into existence in the universe, and, once it comes into existence, it will never die out.” Thinking Outside the Box