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+In cosmology and philosophy of science, the anthropic principle, also known as the observation selection effect, is the proposition that the range of possible observations that could be made about the universe is limited by the fact that observations are only possible in the type of universe that is capable of developing observers in the first place. Proponents of the anthropic principle argue that it explains why the universe has the age and the fundamental physical constants necessary to accommodate intelligent life. If either had been significantly different, no one would have been around to make observations. Anthropic reasoning has been used to address the question as to why certain measured physical constants take the values that they do, rather than some other arbitrary values, and to explain a perception that the universe appears to be finely tuned for the existence of life.
+There are many different formulations of the anthropic principle. Philosopher Nick Bostrom counts thirty, but the underlying principles can be divided into "weak" and "strong" forms, depending on the types of cosmological claims they entail.
+
+== Definition and basis ==
+The principle was formulated as a response to a series of observations that the laws of nature and parameters of the universe have values that are consistent with conditions for life as it is known rather than values that would not be consistent with life on Earth. The anthropic principle states that this is an a posteriori necessity, because if life were impossible, no living entity would be there to observe it, and thus it would not be known. That is, it must be possible to observe some universe, and hence, the laws and constants of any such universe must accommodate that possibility.
+The term anthropic in "anthropic principle" has been argued to be a misnomer. While singling out the currently observable kind of carbon-based life, none of the finely tuned phenomena require human life or some kind of carbon chauvinism. Any form of life or any form of heavy atom, stone, star, or galaxy would do; nothing specifically human or anthropic is involved.
+The anthropic principle has given rise to some confusion and controversy, partly because the phrase has been applied to several distinct ideas. All versions of the principle have been accused of discouraging the search for a deeper physical understanding of the universe. Critics of the weak anthropic principle point out that its lack of falsifiability entails that it is non-scientific and therefore inherently not useful. Stronger variants of the anthropic principle that are not tautologies can still make claims considered controversial by some; these would be contingent upon empirical verification.
+
+== Anthropic observations ==
+
+In 1961, Robert Dicke noted that the age of the universe, as seen by living observers, cannot be random. Instead, biological factors constrain the universe to be more or less in a "golden age", neither too young nor too old. If the universe was one tenth as old as its present age, there would not have been sufficient time to build up appreciable levels of metallicity (levels of elements besides hydrogen and helium) especially carbon, by nucleosynthesis. Small rocky planets did not yet exist. If the universe were 10 times older than it actually is, most stars would be too old to remain on the main sequence and would have turned into white dwarfs, aside from the dimmest red dwarfs, and stable planetary systems would have already come to an end. Thus, Dicke explained the coincidence between large dimensionless numbers constructed from the constants of physics and the age of the universe, a coincidence that inspired Dirac's varying-G theory.
+Dicke later reasoned that the density of matter in the universe must be almost exactly the critical density needed to prevent the Big Crunch (the "Dicke coincidences" argument). The most recent measurements may suggest that the observed density of baryonic matter, and some theoretical predictions of the amount of dark matter, account for about 30% of this critical density, with the rest contributed by a cosmological constant. Steven Weinberg gave an anthropic explanation for this fact: he noted that the cosmological constant has a remarkably low value, some 120 orders of magnitude smaller than the value particle physics predicts (this has been described as the "worst prediction in physics"). However, if the cosmological constant were several orders of magnitude larger than its observed value, the universe would suffer catastrophic inflation, which would preclude the formation of stars, and hence life.
+The observed values of the dimensionless physical constants (such as the fine-structure constant) governing the four fundamental interactions are balanced as if fine-tuned to permit the formation of commonly found matter and subsequently the emergence of life. A slight increase in the strong interaction (up to 50% for some authors) would bind the dineutron and the diproton and convert all hydrogen in the early universe to helium; likewise, an increase in the weak interaction also would convert all hydrogen to helium. Water, as well as sufficiently long-lived stable stars, both essential for the emergence of life as it is known, would not exist. More generally, small changes in the relative strengths of the four fundamental interactions can greatly affect the universe's age, structure, and capacity for life.

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+
+== Origin ==
+The phrase "anthropic principle" first appeared in Brandon Carter's contribution to a 1973 Kraków symposium. Carter, a theoretical astrophysicist, articulated the anthropic principle in reaction to the Copernican principle, which states that humans do not occupy a privileged position in the Universe. Carter said: "Although our situation is not necessarily central, it is inevitably privileged to some extent." Specifically, Carter disagreed with using the Copernican principle to justify the Perfect Cosmological Principle, which states that all large regions and times in the universe must be statistically identical. The latter principle underlies the steady-state theory, which had recently been falsified by the 1965 discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation. This discovery was unequivocal evidence that the universe has changed radically over time (for example, via the Big Bang).
+Carter defined two forms of the anthropic principle, a "weak" one that referred only to anthropic selection of privileged spacetime locations in the universe, and a more controversial "strong" form that addressed the values of the fundamental constants of physics.
+Since Carter's 1973 paper, the term anthropic principle has been extended to cover a number of ideas that differ in important ways from his. Particular confusion was caused by the 1986 book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John D. Barrow and Frank Tipler, which distinguished between a "weak" and "strong" anthropic principle in a way different from Carter's, as discussed in the next section.
+Carter was not the first to invoke some form of the anthropic principle. Ludwig Boltzmann may have been one of the first in modern science to use anthropic reasoning. Prior to knowledge of the Big Bang, Boltzmann's thermodynamic concepts painted a picture of a universe that had inexplicably low entropy. Boltzmann suggested several explanations, one of which relied on fluctuations that could produce pockets of low entropy or Boltzmann universes. While most of the universe is featureless in this model, to Boltzmann, it is unremarkable that humanity happens to inhabit a Boltzmann universe, as that is the only place that could develop and support intelligent life.
+The evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace anticipated the anthropic principle as long ago as 1904: "Such a vast and complex universe as that which we know exists around us, may have been absolutely required [...] in order to produce a world that should be precisely adapted in every detail for the orderly development of life culminating in man."
+In 1957, Robert Dicke wrote: "The age of the Universe 'now' is not random but conditioned by biological factors [...] [changes in the values of the fundamental constants of physics] would preclude the existence of man to consider the problem."
+
+== Variants ==
+According to Brandon Carter, the weak anthropic principle (WAP) states that "... our location in the universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers." For Carter, "location" refers to our location in time and space. Carter goes on to define the strong anthropic principle (SAP) as the idea that:
+
+The universe (and hence the fundamental parameters on which it depends) must be such as to admit the creation of observers within it at some stage. To paraphrase Descartes, cogito ergo mundus talis est.
+The Latin tag (which means, "I think, therefore the world is such [as it is]") makes it clear that "must" indicates a deduction from the fact of our existence; the statement is thus a truism.
+Roger Penrose explained the weak form as follows:
+
+The argument can be used to explain why the conditions happen to be just right for the existence of (intelligent) life on the Earth at the present time. For if they were not just right, then we should not have found ourselves to be here now, but somewhere else, at some other appropriate time. This principle was used very effectively by Brandon Carter and Robert Dicke to resolve an issue that had puzzled physicists for a good many years. The issue concerned various striking numerical relations that are observed to hold between the physical constants (the gravitational constant, the mass of the proton, the age of the universe, etc.). A puzzling aspect of this was that some of the relations hold only at the present epoch in the Earth's history, so we appear, coincidentally, to be living at a very special time (give or take a few million years!). This was later explained, by Carter and Dicke, by the fact that this epoch coincided with the lifetime of what are called main-sequence stars, such as the Sun. At any other epoch, the argument ran, there would be no intelligent life around to measure the physical constants in question—so the coincidence had to hold, simply because there would be intelligent life around only at the particular time that the coincidence did hold!
+One reason this is plausible is that there are many other places and times in which humans could have evolved. But when applying the strong principle, there is only one universe, with one set of fundamental parameters. Thus, Carter offers two possibilities: First, humans can use their own existence to make "predictions" about the parameters. But second, "as a last resort", humans can convert these predictions into explanations by assuming that there is more than one universe, in fact a large and possibly infinite collection of universes, something that is now called the multiverse ("world ensemble" was Carter's term), in which the parameters (and perhaps the laws of physics) vary across universes. The strong principle then becomes an example of a selection effect, analogous to the weak principle. Postulating a multiverse is a radical step that could provide at least a partial insight, seemingly out of the reach of normal science, regarding why the fundamental laws of physics take the particular form we observe and not another.
+In their 1986 book, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, John Barrow and Frank Tipler depart from Carter and define the WAP and SAP differently. According to Barrow and Tipler, the WAP is the idea that:

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+The observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable but they take on values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and by the requirements that the universe be old enough for it to have already done so.
+Unlike Carter, they restrict the principle to "carbon-based life" rather than just "observers". A more important difference is that they apply the WAP to the fundamental physical constants, such as the fine-structure constant, the number of spacetime dimensions, and the cosmological constant—topics that fall under Carter's SAP.
+According to Barrow and Tipler, the SAP states that "the Universe must have those properties which allow life to develop within it at some stage in its history." While this looks very similar to Carter's SAP, the "must" is an imperative, as shown by the following three possible elaborations of the SAP, each proposed by Barrow and Tipler:
+
+"There exists one possible Universe 'designed' with the goal of generating and sustaining 'observers'."  This can be seen as simply the classic design argument restated in the garb of contemporary cosmology. It implies that the purpose of the universe is to give rise to intelligent life, with the laws of nature and their fundamental physical constants set to ensure that life emerges and evolves.
+"Observers are necessary to bring the Universe into being."  Barrow and Tipler believe that this is a valid conclusion from quantum mechanics, as John Archibald Wheeler has suggested, especially via his idea that information is the fundamental reality and his participatory anthropic principle (PAP), which is an interpretation of quantum mechanics associated with the ideas of Eugene Wigner. (See: It from bit)
+"An ensemble of other different universes is necessary for the existence of our Universe."  By contrast, Carter merely says that an ensemble of universes is necessary for the SAP to count as an explanation.
+Philosophers John Leslie and Nick Bostrom reject the Barrow and Tipler SAP as a fundamental misreading of Carter. For Bostrom, Carter's anthropic principle just warns us to make allowance for "anthropic bias"—that is, the bias created by anthropic selection effects (which Bostrom calls "observation" selection effects)—the necessity for observers to exist in order to get a result. He writes:
+
+Many "anthropic principles" are simply confused. Some, especially those drawing inspiration from Brandon Carter's seminal papers, are sound, but... they are too weak to do any real scientific work. In particular, I argue that existing methodology does not permit any observational consequences to be derived from contemporary cosmological theories, though these theories quite plainly can be and are being tested empirically by astronomers. What is needed to bridge this methodological gap is a more adequate formulation of how observation selection effects are to be taken into account.
+Bostrom defines a concept called the "strong self-sampling assumption" (SSSA), the idea that "each observer-moment should reason as if it were randomly selected from the class of all observer-moments in its reference class." Analyzing an observer's experience into a sequence of "observer-moments" like this helps avoid certain paradoxes, but the main ambiguity is the selection of the appropriate "reference class". For Carter's WAP, this might correspond to all real or potential observer-moments in our universe. As for his SAP, this might correspond to all in the multiverse. Bostrom's mathematical development shows that choosing too broad or too narrow a reference class leads to counter-intuitive results, but he is not able to prescribe an ideal choice.
+According to Jürgen Schmidhuber, the anthropic principle essentially just says that the conditional probability of finding yourself in a universe compatible with your existence is always one. It does not allow for any additional nontrivial predictions such as "gravity won't change tomorrow". To gain more predictive power, additional assumptions on the prior distribution of alternative universes are necessary.
+Playwright and novelist Michael Frayn describes a form of the strong anthropic principle in his 2006 book The Human Touch, which explores what he characterises as "the central oddity of the Universe":
+
+It's this simple paradox. The Universe is very old and very large. Humankind, by comparison, is only a tiny disturbance in one small corner of it--and a very recent one. Yet the Universe is only very large and very old because we are here to say it is... And yet, of course, we all know perfectly well that it is what it is whether we are here or not.

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+== Character of anthropic reasoning ==
+Carter chose to focus on a tautological aspect of his ideas, which has resulted in much confusion. In fact, anthropic reasoning interests scientists because of something that is only implicit in the above formal definitions, namely that humans should give serious consideration to there being other universes with different values of the "fundamental parameters"—that is, the dimensionless physical constants and initial conditions for the Big Bang. Carter and others have argued that life would not be possible in most such universes. In other words, the universe humans live in is fine tuned to permit life. Collins & Hawking (1973) characterized Carter's then-unpublished big idea as the postulate that "there is not one universe but a whole infinite ensemble of universes with all possible initial conditions". If this is granted, the anthropic principle provides a plausible explanation for the fine tuning of our universe: the "typical" universe is not fine-tuned, but given enough universes, a small fraction will be capable of supporting intelligent life. Ours must be one of these, and so the observed fine tuning should be no cause for wonder.
+Although philosophers have discussed related concepts for centuries, in the early 1970s the only genuine physical theory yielding a multiverse of sorts was the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. This would allow variation in initial conditions, but not in the truly fundamental constants. Since that time a number of mechanisms for producing a multiverse have been suggested: see the review by Max Tegmark. An important development in the 1980s was the combination of inflation theory with the hypothesis that some parameters are determined by symmetry breaking in the early universe, which allows parameters previously thought of as "fundamental constants" to vary over very large distances, thus eroding the distinction between Carter's weak and strong principles. At the beginning of the 21st century, the string landscape emerged as a mechanism for varying essentially all the constants, including the number of spatial dimensions.
+The anthropic idea that fundamental parameters are selected from a multitude of different possibilities (each actual in some universe or other) contrasts with the traditional hope of physicists for a theory of everything having no free parameters. As Albert Einstein said: "What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world." In 2002, some proponents of the leading candidate for a "theory of everything", string theory, proclaimed "the end of the anthropic principle" since there would be no free parameters to select. In 2003, however, Leonard Susskind stated: "... it seems plausible that the landscape is unimaginably large and diverse. This is the behavior that gives credence to the anthropic principle."
+The modern form of a design argument is put forth by intelligent design. Proponents of intelligent design often cite the fine-tuning observations that (in part) preceded the formulation of the anthropic principle by Carter as a proof of an intelligent designer. Opponents of intelligent design are not limited to those who hypothesize that other universes exist; they may also argue, anti-anthropically, that the universe is less fine-tuned than often claimed, or that accepting fine tuning as a brute fact is less astonishing than the idea of an intelligent creator. Furthermore, even accepting fine tuning, Sober (2005) and Ikeda and Jefferys, argue that the anthropic principle as conventionally stated actually undermines intelligent design.
+Paul Davies's book The Goldilocks Enigma (2006) reviews the current state of the fine-tuning debate in detail, and concludes by enumerating the following responses to that debate:
+
+The absurd universe: Our universe just happens to be the way it is.
+The unique universe: There is a deep underlying unity in physics that necessitates the Universe being the way it is. A Theory of Everything will explain why the various features of the Universe must have exactly the values that have been recorded.
+The multiverse: Multiple universes exist, having all possible combinations of characteristics, and humans inevitably find themselves within a universe that allows us to exist.
+Intelligent design: A creator designed the Universe with the purpose of supporting complexity and the emergence of intelligence.
+The life principle: There is an underlying principle that constrains the Universe to evolve towards life and mind.
+The self-explaining universe: A closed explanatory or causal loop: "perhaps only universes with a capacity for consciousness can exist". This is Wheeler's participatory anthropic principle (PAP).
+The fake universe: Humans live inside a virtual reality simulation.
+Omitted here is Lee Smolin's model of cosmological natural selection, also known as fecund universes, which proposes that universes have "offspring" that are more plentiful if they resemble our universe. Also see Gardner (2005).
+Clearly each of these hypotheses resolve some aspects of the puzzle, while leaving others unanswered. Followers of Carter would admit only option 3 as an anthropic explanation, whereas 3 through 6 are covered by different versions of Barrow and Tipler's SAP (which would also include 7 if it is considered a variant of 4, as in Tipler 1994).
+The anthropic principle, at least as Carter conceived it, can be applied on scales much smaller than the whole universe. For example, Carter (1983) inverted the usual line of reasoning and pointed out that when interpreting the evolutionary record, one must take into account cosmological and astrophysical considerations. With this in mind, Carter concluded that given the best estimates of the age of the universe, the evolutionary chain culminating in Homo sapiens probably admits only one or two low probability links.

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+Some have argued that fine-tuning is not astonishing at all in itself, but only from our situated point of view, which must be factored out of the question. This argument was given in 2021 by David Chauvet in his writings on natural law, which is linked to the question of God and therefore to cosmology: the universe is only astonishing to those who value life, such as the humans who arose from it. In the same way, the number on a lottery ticket is nothing special, unless it is associated with a sum of money, which is itself valued. Without this valorization of life, fostered by the fact that observers spontaneously value it, the universe's parameters are no more astonishing than a winning lottery ticket would be to an observer for whom money holds no interest. As Chauvet argues: It is arguably not surprising that those who have emerged from and are part of a life-supporting universe value a life-supporting universe over one that does not support life, just as someone who has emerged from and is part of a society where money is important values drawing a winning lottery number rather than drawing a losing number. If we consider this, there is no longer any real reason to be astonished by the fine-tuning of our universe, any more than there would be reason to be astonished by the fine-tuning of a universe that harbored nothing that seems interesting to us in one way or another.
+
+== Observational evidence ==
+No possible observational evidence bears on Carter's WAP, as it is merely advice to the scientist and asserts nothing debatable. The obvious test of Barrow's SAP, which says that the universe is "required" to support life, is to find evidence of life in universes other than ours. Any other universe is, by most definitions, unobservable (otherwise it would be included in our portion of this universe). Thus, in principle Barrow's SAP cannot be falsified by observing a universe in which an observer cannot exist.
+Philosopher John Leslie states that the Carter SAP (with multiverse) predicts the following:
+
+Physical theory will evolve so as to strengthen the hypothesis that early phase transitions occur probabilistically rather than deterministically, in which case there will be no deep physical reason for the values of fundamental constants;
+Various theories for generating multiple universes will prove robust;
+Evidence that the universe is fine tuned will continue to accumulate;
+No life with a non-carbon chemistry will be discovered;
+Mathematical studies of galaxy formation will confirm that it is sensitive to the rate of expansion of the universe.
+Hogan has emphasised that it would be very strange if all fundamental constants were strictly determined, since this would leave us with no ready explanation for apparent fine tuning. In fact, humans might have to resort to something akin to Barrow and Tipler's SAP: there would be no option for such a universe not to support life.
+Probabilistic predictions of parameter values can be made given:
+
+a particular multiverse with a "measure", i.e. a well defined "density of universes" (so, for parameter X, one can calculate the prior probability P(X0) dX that X is in the range X0 < X < X0 + dX), and
+an estimate of the number of observers in each universe, N(X) (e.g., this might be taken as proportional to the number of stars in the universe).
+The probability of observing value X is then proportional to N(X) P(X). A generic feature of an analysis of this nature is that the expected values of the fundamental physical constants should not be "over-tuned", i.e. if there is some perfectly tuned predicted value (e.g. zero), the observed value need be no closer to that predicted value than what is required to make life possible. The small but finite value of the cosmological constant can be regarded as a successful prediction in this sense.
+One thing that would not count as evidence for the anthropic principle is evidence that the Earth or the Solar System occupied a privileged position in the universe, in violation of the Copernican principle (for possible counterevidence to this principle, see Copernican principle), unless there was some reason to think that that position was a necessary condition for our existence as observers.
+
+== Applications of the principle ==
+
+=== The nucleosynthesis of carbon-12 ===
+Fred Hoyle may have invoked anthropic reasoning to predict an astrophysical phenomenon. He is said to have reasoned, from the prevalence on Earth of life forms whose chemistry was based on carbon-12 nuclei, that there must be an undiscovered resonance in the carbon-12 nucleus facilitating its synthesis in stellar interiors via the triple-alpha process. He then calculated the energy of this undiscovered resonance to be 7.6 million electronvolts. Willie Fowler's research group soon found this resonance, and its measured energy was close to Hoyle's prediction.
+However, in 2010 Helge Kragh argued that Hoyle did not use anthropic reasoning in making his prediction, since he made his prediction in 1953 and anthropic reasoning did not come into prominence until 1980. He called this an "anthropic myth", saying that Hoyle and others made an after-the-fact connection between carbon and life decades after the discovery of the resonance.
+
+ An investigation of the historical circumstances of the prediction and its subsequent experimental confirmation shows that Hoyle and his contemporaries did not associate the level in the carbon nucleus with life at all.
+
+=== Cosmic inflation ===

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+
+Don Page criticized the entire theory of cosmic inflation as follows. He emphasized that initial conditions that made possible a thermodynamic arrow of time in a universe with a Big Bang origin, must include the assumption that at the initial singularity, the entropy of the universe was low and therefore extremely improbable. Paul Davies rebutted this criticism by invoking an inflationary version of the anthropic principle. While Davies accepted the premise that the initial state of the visible universe (which filled a microscopic amount of space before inflating) had to possess a very low entropy value—due to random quantum fluctuations—to account for the observed thermodynamic arrow of time, he deemed this fact an advantage for the theory. That the tiny patch of space from which our observable universe grew had to be extremely orderly, to allow the post-inflation universe to have an arrow of time, makes it unnecessary to adopt any "ad hoc" hypotheses about the initial entropy state, hypotheses other Big Bang theories require.
+
+=== String theory ===
+
+String theory predicts a large number of possible universes, called the "backgrounds" or "vacua". The set of these vacua is often called the "multiverse" or "anthropic landscape" or "string landscape". Leonard Susskind has argued that the existence of a large number of vacua puts anthropic reasoning on firm ground: only universes whose properties are such as to allow observers to exist are observed, while a possibly much larger set of universes lacking such properties go unnoticed.
+Steven Weinberg believes the anthropic principle may be appropriated by cosmologists committed to nontheism, and refers to that principle as a "turning point" in modern science because applying it to the string landscape "may explain how the constants of nature that we observe can take values suitable for life without being fine-tuned by a benevolent creator". Others—most notably David Gross but also Luboš Motl, Peter Woit, and Lee Smolin—argue that this is not predictive. Max Tegmark, Mario Livio, and Martin Rees argue that only some aspects of a physical theory need be observable and/or testable for the theory to be accepted, and that many well-accepted theories are far from completely testable at present.
+Jürgen Schmidhuber (2000–2002) points out that Ray Solomonoff's theory of universal inductive inference and its extensions already provide a framework for maximizing our confidence in any theory, given a limited sequence of physical observations, and some prior distribution on the set of possible explanations of the universe.
+Zhi-Wei Wang and Samuel L. Braunstein proved that life's existence in the universe depends on various fundamental constants. It suggests that without a complete understanding of these constants, one might incorrectly perceive the universe as being intelligently designed for life. This perspective challenges the view that our universe is unique in its ability to support life.
+
+=== Dimensions of spacetime ===

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+There are two kinds of dimensions: spatial (bidirectional) and temporal (unidirectional). Let the number of spatial dimensions be N and the number of temporal dimensions be T. That N = 3 and T = 1, setting aside the compactified dimensions invoked by string theory and undetectable to date, can be explained by appealing to the physical consequences of letting N differ from 3 and T differ from 1. The argument is often of an anthropic character and possibly the first of its kind, albeit before the complete concept came into vogue.
+The implicit notion that the dimensionality of the universe is special is first attributed to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who in the Discourse on Metaphysics suggested that the world is "the one which is at the same time the simplest in hypothesis and the richest in phenomena". Immanuel Kant argued that 3-dimensional space was a consequence of the inverse square law of universal gravitation. While Kant's argument is historically important, John D. Barrow said that it "gets the punch-line back to front: it is the three-dimensionality of space that explains why we see inverse-square force laws in Nature, not vice-versa" (Barrow 2002:204).
+In 1920, Paul Ehrenfest showed that if there is only a single time dimension and more than three spatial dimensions, the orbit of a planet about its Sun cannot remain stable. The same is true of a star's orbit around the center of its galaxy. Ehrenfest also showed that if there are an even number of spatial dimensions, then the different parts of a wave impulse will travel at different speeds. If there are 
+  
+    
+      
+        5
+        +
+        2
+        k
+      
+    
+    {\displaystyle 5+2k}
+  
+ spatial dimensions, where k is a positive whole number, then wave impulses become distorted. In 1922, Hermann Weyl claimed that Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism can be expressed in terms of an action only for a four-dimensional manifold. Finally, Tangherlini showed in 1963 that when there are more than three spatial dimensions, electron orbitals around nuclei cannot be stable; electrons would either fall into the nucleus or disperse.
+Max Tegmark expands on the preceding argument in the following anthropic manner. If T differs from 1, the behavior of physical systems could not be predicted reliably from knowledge of the relevant partial differential equations. In such a universe, intelligent life capable of manipulating technology could not emerge. Moreover, if T > 1, Tegmark maintains that protons and electrons would be unstable and could decay into particles having greater mass than themselves. (This is not a problem if the particles have a sufficiently low temperature.) Lastly, if N < 3, gravitation of any kind becomes problematic, and the universe would probably be too simple to contain observers. For example, when N < 3, nerves cannot cross without intersecting. Hence anthropic and other arguments rule out all cases except N = 3 and T = 1, which describes the world around us.
+On the other hand, in view of creating black holes from an ideal monatomic gas under its self-gravity, Wei-Xiang Feng showed that (3 + 1)-dimensional spacetime is the marginal dimensionality. Moreover, it is the unique dimensionality that can afford a "stable" gas sphere with a "positive" cosmological constant. However, a self-gravitating gas cannot be stably bound if the mass sphere is larger than ~1021 solar masses, due to the small positivity of the cosmological constant observed.
+In 2019, James Scargill argued that complex life may be possible with two spatial dimensions. According to Scargill, a purely scalar theory of gravity may enable a local gravitational force, and 2D networks may be sufficient for complex neural networks.
+
+== Metaphysical interpretations ==
+Some of the metaphysical disputes and speculations include, for example, attempts to back Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's earlier interpretation of the universe as being Christ centered (compare Omega Point), expressing a creatio evolutiva instead the elder notion of creatio continua. From a strictly secular, humanist perspective, it allows as well to put human beings back in the center, an anthropogenic shift in cosmology. Karl W. Giberson has laconically stated thatWhat emerges is the suggestion that cosmology may at last be in possession of some raw material for a postmodern creation myth.
+William Sims Bainbridge disagreed with de Chardin's optimism about a future Omega point at the end of history, arguing that logically, humans are trapped at the Omicron point, in the middle of the Greek alphabet rather than advancing to the end, because the universe does not need to have any characteristics that would support our further technical progress, if the anthropic principle merely requires it to be suitable for our evolution to this point.

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+---
+title: "Anthropic principle"
+chunk: 8/9
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:47.620122+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+=== The Anthropic Cosmological Principle ===
+A thorough extant study of the anthropic principle is the book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John D. Barrow, a cosmologist, and Frank J. Tipler, a cosmologist and mathematical physicist. This book sets out in detail the many known anthropic coincidences and constraints, including many found by its authors. While the book is primarily a work of theoretical astrophysics, it also touches on quantum physics, chemistry, and earth science. An entire chapter argues that Homo sapiens is, with high probability, the only intelligent species in the Milky Way.
+The book begins with an extensive review of many topics in the history of ideas the authors deem relevant to the anthropic principle, because the authors believe that principle has important antecedents in the notions of teleology and intelligent design. They discuss the writings of Fichte, Hegel, Bergson, and Alfred North Whitehead, and the Omega Point cosmology of Teilhard de Chardin. Barrow and Tipler carefully distinguish teleological reasoning from eutaxiological reasoning; the former asserts that order must have a consequent purpose; the latter asserts more modestly that order must have a planned cause. They attribute this important but nearly always overlooked distinction to an obscure 1883 book by L. E. Hicks.
+Seeing little sense in a principle requiring intelligent life to emerge while remaining indifferent to the possibility of its eventual extinction, Barrow and Tipler propose the final anthropic principle (FAP): Intelligent information-processing must come into existence in the universe, and, once it comes into existence, it will never die out.
+Barrow and Tipler submit that the FAP is both a valid physical statement and "closely connected with moral values". FAP places strong constraints on the structure of the universe, constraints developed further in Tipler's The Physics of Immortality. One such constraint is that the universe must end in a Big Crunch, which seems unlikely in view of the tentative conclusions drawn since 1998 about dark energy, based on observations of very distant supernovas.
+In his review of Barrow and Tipler, Martin Gardner ridiculed the FAP by quoting the last two sentences of their book as defining a completely ridiculous anthropic principle (CRAP):
+
+At the instant the Omega Point is reached, life will have gained control of all matter and forces not only in a single universe, but in all universes whose existence is logically possible; life will have spread into all spatial regions in all universes which could logically exist, and will have stored an infinite amount of information, including all bits of knowledge that it is logically possible to know. And this is the end.

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+---
+title: "Anthropic principle"
+chunk: 9/9
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:47.620122+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+== Reception and controversies ==
+Carter has frequently expressed regret for his own choice of the word "anthropic", because it conveys the misleading impression that the principle involves humans in particular, to the exclusion of non-human intelligence more broadly. Others have criticised the word "principle" as being too grandiose to describe straightforward applications of selection effects.
+A common criticism of Carter's SAP is that it is an easy deus ex machina that discourages searches for physical explanations. To quote Penrose again: "It tends to be invoked by theorists whenever they do not have a good enough theory to explain the observed facts."
+Carter's SAP and Barrow and Tipler's WAP have been dismissed as truisms or trivial tautologies—that is, statements true solely by virtue of their logical form and not because a substantive claim is made and supported by observation of reality. As such, they are criticized as an elaborate way of saying, "If things were different, they would be different", which is a valid statement, but does not make a claim of some factual alternative over another.
+Critics of the Barrow and Tipler SAP claim that it is neither testable nor falsifiable, and thus is not a scientific statement but rather a philosophical one. The same criticism has been leveled against the hypothesis of a multiverse, although some argue that it does make falsifiable predictions. A modified version of this criticism is that humanity understands so little about the emergence of life, especially intelligent life, that it is effectively impossible to calculate the number of observers in each universe. Also, the prior distribution of universes as a function of the fundamental constants is easily modified to get any desired result.
+Many criticisms focus on versions of the strong anthropic principle, such as Barrow and Tipler's anthropic cosmological principle, which are teleological notions that tend to describe the existence of life as a necessary prerequisite for the observable constants of physics. Similarly, Stephen Jay Gould, Michael Shermer, and others claim that the stronger versions of the anthropic principle seem to reverse known causes and effects. Gould compared the claim that the universe is fine-tuned for the benefit of our kind of life to saying that sausages were made long and narrow so that they could fit into modern hotdog buns, or saying that ships had been invented to house barnacles. These critics cite the vast physical, fossil, genetic, and other biological evidence consistent with life having been fine-tuned through natural selection to adapt to the physical and geophysical environment in which life exists. Life appears to have adapted to the universe, and not vice versa.
+Some applications of the anthropic principle have been criticized as an argument by lack of imagination, for tacitly assuming that carbon compounds and water are the only possible chemistry of life (sometimes called "carbon chauvinism"; see also alternative biochemistry). The range of fundamental physical constants consistent with the evolution of carbon-based life may also be wider than those who advocate a fine-tuned universe have argued. For instance, Harnik et al. propose a Weakless Universe in which the weak nuclear force is eliminated. They show that this has no significant effect on the other fundamental interactions, provided some adjustments are made in how those interactions work. However, if some of the fine-tuned details of our universe were violated, that would rule out complex structures of any kind—stars, planets, galaxies, etc.
+Lee Smolin has offered a theory designed to improve on the lack of imagination that has been ascribed to anthropic principles. He puts forth his fecund universes theory, which assumes universes have "offspring" through the creation of black holes whose offspring universes have values of physical constants that depend on those of the mother universe.
+The philosophers of cosmology John Earman, Ernan McMullin, and Jesús Mosterín contend that "in its weak version, the anthropic principle is a mere tautology, which does not allow us to explain anything or to predict anything that we did not already know. In its strong version, it is a gratuitous speculation". A further criticism by Mosterín concerns the flawed "anthropic" inference from the assumption of an infinity of worlds to the existence of one like ours:
+
+The suggestion that an infinity of objects characterized by certain numbers or properties implies the existence among them of objects with any combination of those numbers or characteristics [...] is mistaken. An infinity does not imply at all that any arrangement is present or repeated. [...] The assumption that all possible worlds are realized in an infinite universe is equivalent to the assertion that any infinite set of numbers contains all numbers (or at least all Gödel numbers of the [defining] sequences), which is obviously false.
+
+== See also ==
+
+== Notes ==
+
+== Footnotes ==
+
+== References ==
+
+== External links ==

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+---
+title: "Astronomy and religion"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy_and_religion"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:48.848387+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Astronomy has been a favorite and significant component of mythology and religion throughout history. Astronomy and cosmology are parts of the myths of many cultures and religion around the world. Astronomy and religion have long been closely intertwined, particularly during the early history of astronomy.  Archaeological evidence of many ancient cultures demonstrates that celestial bodies were the subject of worship during the Stone and Bronze Ages. Amulets and stone walls in northern Europe depict arrangements of stars in constellations that match their historical positions, particularly circumpolar constellations. These date back as much as 30,000–40,000 years. 
+In many ancient religions, the northern circumpolar stars were associated with darkness, death and the underworld of the dead. For the Aztecs, the northern stars were associated with Tezcatlipoca. In Peking, China, was a shrine devoted to the North Star deity. Such worship of the northern stars may have been associated with time keeping, as the positions of the stars could identify the annual seasons. Likewise, as agriculture developed, the need to keep accurate time led to more careful tracking of the positions of the sun, moon and planets; resulting with their deification when they became inextricably linked with the means of survival.  In the ancient Egyptian calendar, the date of the annual flooding of the Nile was predicted by observing the heliacal rising of a star.  Indeed, the belief in a strong association between the events on the earth and in the heavens led to the development of astrology.
+The first recorded conflict between religious orthodoxy and astronomy occurred with the Greek astronomer Anaxagoras. His beliefs that the heavenly bodies were the result of an evolutionary process and that the sun was a great burning stone (rather than the deity Helios), resulted in his arrest. He was charged with contravening the established religious beliefs. Although acquitted, he was forced to go into retirement.
+As science expanded during the Renaissance, the secular beliefs of scientific investigators encountered the opposition of Christian orthodoxy. The most famous such conflict was that of Galileo Galilei, who was tried by the Inquisition on suspicion of heresy. However, many astronomers were also highly religious and attempted to reconcile their beliefs with the discoveries they made following the invention of the telescope.
+
+
+== Background ==
+
+Astronomy and spirituality have long been intertwined and closely related in looking to the heavens.   With human spaceflight, psychological and cognitive changes were reported by people who directly interacted with outer space, either in visual manner or in exposure, demonstrated a quality of being furiously motivated and concerned about the Earth.
+Though astronomy and spirituality may appear to be two separate topics, they both look for answers in the same area: the cosmos.  Both astrology and spirituality have been utilized for many millenniums.  Numerous ancient civilizations worshiped the Sun, Moon, and stars.  For example,  Heliopolis, or the City of the Sun, was Egypt's most renowned spiritual temple and civilization,  the foundation of Ancient Egyptian mythology.  Its hillside site, near present-day Cairo, was thought to be where the Sun god Ra and the creator god Aten  first appeared.
+
+
+== Heliocentrism and geocentrism ==
+Heliocentrism is the idea that the sun is the center of the universe, and all the planets revolve around it. This is opposite to geocentrism in which the Earth is the center of the universe with the sun and all the other planets revolve around it. The geocentric model was the widely accepted model during the times of Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy, and other astronomers. This model was rooted in observations made by astronomers at the time as well as being rooted in religion. Nicolaus Copernicus followed by astronomers such as Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler suggested a different model with the sun at the center of the universe. This model was based on more extensive and precise observations with classical instruments, The newly created telescope provided supporting evidence and mathematical studies suggested orbits in the shape of ellipses. These models were not accepted by society which at the time was dominated by the Catholic religion and these astronomers received harsh criticism both the church and those around them.
+The argument by Tammaso Cassini was that the bible did not support the Earth revolving around the Sun. One example provided was in Joshua 10 when God stopped the Sun for Joshua. It was also argued that God would place his greatest creation at the center of the universe thus moving the Earth out of the center took away from the greatness of his creation
+
+
+== Galileo and religion ==
+
+The Sidereus Nuncius written by Galileo in 1610, approved by the Holy Office, attracted much attention. This writing documented his observations using the telescope, describing the Moons of Jupiter and the mountains of the Moon. 
+By 1616 the Holy Office also known as the Inquisition condemned the Copernican theory henceforth condemning the works of Galileo.  If the science did not back up scripture, then it was not to be taught.
+By 1633, Galileo's new best-seller Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems had been prohibited.  He recanted his heliocentrism and was sentenced to home arrest for the rest of his life.  Four hundred years after Galileo's death, Pope John Paul II set up a committee to look into the trial and Galileo was pardoned.  
+
+
+== Newton and religion ==
+
+Isaac Newton was raised as an Anglican. After coming to the conclusion that the Holy Trinity could not exist because Jesus couldn't be equal to God, Newton chose to not become a minister. He still believed in the Bible and that the idea of going against the first commandment was worse than walking away from Cambridge. Newton didn't believe religion and science were mutually exclusive and used the Bible as a guide for his work. Despite his desire to connect the science to the scripture, he was attacked by society and the church in his writing of the Principia when he was studying astronomy and soon delved into other works after being incapable of handling the criticism from his peers. Newton turned to alchemy using Greek myths to guide his work and became known less for his work in astronomy creating the reflecting telescope and more for his work in developing a scientific procedure and his laws around gravity.
+
+
+== In Japan (20th century) ==
+Ananaikyo, a Shinto-derived religion founded in 1949, is known for building several astronomical observatories in Japan, since Ananaikyo states that "astronomy is religion" (天文即宗教).
+
+
+== See also ==
+Astronomy and Christianity
+Astronomy in the medieval Islamic world
+Hebrew astronomy
+History of astrology
+History of astronomy
+Pantheism
+Relationship between religion and science
+Worship of heavenly bodies
+
+
+== References ==

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+---
+title: "Baháʼí views on science"
+chunk: 1/5
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baháʼí_views_on_science"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:45.616367+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+The Bahá'í Faith teaches that there is a harmony or unity between science and religion, and that true science and true religion can never conflict. This principle is rooted in various statements in the Bahá'í scriptures. Some scholars have argued that ideas in the philosophy of science resonate with the Bahá'í approach. In addition, scholars have noted the Bahá'í view of interpreting religious scriptures symbolically rather than literally as conducive to harmony with scientific findings. The Bahá'í community and leadership have also applied their teachings on science and religion with the goal of the betterment of society, for instance by providing education and technology.
+
+== The principle of the harmony of science and religion ==
+The principle of the harmony of science (or reason) and religion (or faith) has been a verbalized principle of the religion since ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's journeys to the West from 1910 to 1913 as an extension of the view of the singularness of reality to be explored through independent investigations by reasoned and spiritual methods. It had been discussed without the specific wording a decade earlier via a compilation Anton Haddad put together with Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl along with their own perspective - a subject that was subsequently taken up by American Bahá'ís. Saiedi characterizes the relationship between science and the Bahá'í Faith, and the Bahá'í Faith and the importance of reason, as "one of its main spiritual principles."
+The Bahá'í view of science has been summarized as emphasizing recognition of the process of science, although not one isolated to the "scientific method" from a set of values and societal choices and understandings, not mere faith in the conclusions which are always open to refinement, without casting so much doubt that the process of science is somehow lacking because it is influenced by current understandings and conditions to which religion can have a strong influence.
+'Abdu'l-Bahá told jokes at the expense of materialist scientists. However, according to Phelps, he reserved his harshest condemnations for religious people who took religious scripture literally, who he said "…have become the cause of much of the conflict in the world, whether between different faith communities or between science and religion…"
+
+=== In the Bahá'í writings ===
+While writing on the Bahá'í views on science, certain excerpts from Bahá'í scriptures are commonly used by experts; the following are a few examples.
+Nader Saiedi, adjunct professor at UCLA, notes Bahá'u'lláh criticized a pursuit of pseudoscience which claimed that "…numerous esoteric sciences is required to understand the mysteries of the sacred Word." 
+Phelps quotes Bahá'u'lláh on the issue of language and understanding: 
+
+[S]ince all do not possess the same degree of spiritual understanding, certain statements will inevitably be made, and there shall arise, as a consequence, as many differing opinions as there are human minds and as many divergent beliefs as there are created things. This is certain and settled, and can in no wise be averted…. Our aim is that thou shouldst urge all the believers to show forth kindness and mercy and to overlook certain shortcomings among them, that differences may be dispelled; true harmony be established; and the censure and reproach, the hatred and dissension, seen among the peoples of former times may not arise anew.
+'Abdu'l-Bahá anonymously published The Secret of Divine Civilization in 1875 in Iran, noting how the country had declined among the nations "as a result of poor education, bad governance, ignorance of scientific advances, rejection of innovation, and the atrophy of the life of the mind." and later restated Bahá'u'lláh's teaching, saying: 
+
+Religious teaching which is at variance with science and reason is human invention and imagination unworthy of acceptance, for the antithesis and opposite of knowledge is superstition born of the ignorance of man. If we say religion is opposed to science, we lack knowledge of either true science or true religion, for both are founded upon the premises and conclusions of reason, and both must bear its test.” (The Promulgation of Universal Peace)
+Religion and science are the two wings upon which man’s intelligence can soar into the heights, with which the human soul can progress. It is not possible to fly with one wing alone! Should a man try to fly with the wing of religion alone he would quickly fall into the quagmire of superstition, whilst on the other hand, with the wing of science alone he would also make no progress, but fall into the despairing slough of materialism. (Paris Talks )
+Scientific knowledge is the highest attainment upon the human plane, for science is the discoverer of realities. It is of two kinds: material and spiritual. Material science is the investigation of natural phenomena; divine science is the discovery and realization of spiritual verities. The world of humanity must acquire both. (The Promulgation of Universal Peace)
+Shoghi Effendi, head of the religion 1921–1957, offered a vision of the future including this principle:
+
+In such a world society, science and religion, the two most potent forces in human life, will be reconciled, will co-operate, and will harmoniously develop…. The economic resources of the world will be organized, its sources of raw materials will be tapped and fully utilized, its markets will be co-ordinated and developed, and the distribution of its products will be equitably regulated. (World Order of Bahá'u'lláh)
+The Bahá'í International Community released a statement in 1995, The Prosperity of Humankind which says in part: 

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+title: "Baháʼí views on science"
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+
+For the vast majority of the world’s population, the idea that human nature has a spiritual dimension—indeed that its fundamental identity is spiritual—is a truth requiring no demonstration. It is a perception of reality that can be discovered in the earliest records of civilization and that has been cultivated for several millennia by every one of the great religious traditions of humanity’s past. Its enduring achievements in law, the fine arts, and the civilizing of human intercourse are what give substance and meaning to history. In one form or another its promptings are a daily influence in the lives of most people on earth and, as events around the world today dramatically show, the longings it awakens are both inextinguishable and incalculably potent. 
+and further: 
+
+Future generations … will find almost incomprehensible the circumstance that, in an age paying tribute to an egalitarian philosophy and related democratic principles, development planning should view the masses of humanity as essentially recipients of benefits from aid and training. Despite acknowledgment of participation as a principle, the scope of the decision making left to most of the world’s population is at best secondary, limited to a range of choices formulated by agencies inaccessible to them and determined by goals that are often irreconcilable with their perceptions of reality. 
+The scholar Graham Hassall summarizes that statement saying it "demonstrates the breath-taking scope of the Bahá'í program of governance reform, from local to global levels, and encompasses not only political and legal fundamentals, but the roles of science and technology in the global distribution of knowledge and power." and university professor Sabet Behrooz called "…a brilliant statement … (showing) the necessity of harmony between science and religion …(which) must be the guiding light and the organizing principle of our endeavors in integrative studies of the Bahá'í Faith."
+
+== Implications ==
+A number of scholars have offered commentary on the Bahá'í teachings on science and religion. Saiedi outlines several implications of the Bahá'í view of an agreement between religion and science or reason: 
+
+religious evolution of understanding laws and institutions.
+religion is not a substitute or competition with science but have a mutual reciprocity because of their individual qualities
+rather than take religious statements literally, the Bahá'í Faith provides a lexicon of interpretations or allegorical relationships of past statements
+an acceptance of the laws of nature as an expression of divine will and so called miracles are not evidence otherwise.
+Phelps lists the following three points: 

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+title: "Baháʼí views on science"
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+---
+
+that ultimate reality is ineffable
+that humility about what can be understood and applied is itself "the highest degree of human attainment"
+that religious scripture is metaphorical, not literal.
+Farzam Arbab, project developer and Bahá'í administrator, also states that religious literalism is a problem.
+Ian Kluge, independent scholar, observed a relationship between the Bahá'í stance of science and reason and the Bahá'í teaching on independent investigation for the individual where without reason and faith together, quoting `Abdu'l-Bahá, "...the heart finds no rest in it, and real faith is impossible..." and beyond the individual to societal progress which would be "...trapped in traditional worldviews or paradigms, be they religious, cultural, intellectual, or scientific..." and appealed to Aristotle’s four-fold causality which to him "...suggests that science deals with material and efficient causality whereas religion deals with issues related to formal and final causality."
+Scholars have also drawn parallels between Bahá'í views of science and the views of various philosophers. Karlberg and Smith underscore and summarize the work of Alan Chalmers and Peter Godfrey-Smith who had published university press texts, in relation to the Bahá'í Faith on a number of points. Arbab appealed to Thomas Nagel's thoughts on "sophisticated secularism." Roland Faber elaborated this approach in parallel with the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (so-called Process philosophy) and William S. Hatcher drew on the ideas of Aristotle, Avicenna, Bertrand Russell, and Stephen Hawking in his defence of the Bahá'í view.
+Sociologist Margit Warburg quotes a 1978 letter from the Universal House of Justice "The principle of the harmony of science and religion means not only that religious teachings should be studied with the light of reason and evidence as well as of faith and inspiration, but also that everything in this creation, all aspects of human life and knowledge, should be studied in light of revelation as well as in that of purely rational investigation." From it Warburg sees a "clear stance in the dilemma between academic freedom and acceptance of religious premises" and the issues of where "possible conflict with doctrines that can be tested empirically" can occur. She notes that at the inauguration of the chair for Bahá'í Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Peter Khan spoke saying in part that the place of Bahá'í understanding between science and religion was not in the "narrow definitions of legitimate scholarly activity in some disciplines within the academic community" criticizing the materialistic scientific studies of religion, asking that Bahá'í scholars, in Warburg's words, "should not comply with their academic tradition" which ignore the spiritual inputs of religion which will conflict with the Bahá'í Faith's own teachings. Warburg criticizes Khan's statement as a spokesman of the Bahá'í Faith in this situation and what it could mean for Bahá'í administration. "That is precisely what is at stake in the case of the controversial sources to Babi and Baha’i history, as well as concerning the sources to the construction of Abraham."
+Behrooz Sabet proposed a review of the progressive nature of religion and scholarly activity with history and present contexts in 2000. He stated that "An integrative approach to understanding the implications of the Bahá'í teachings, however, follows developmental processes that begin as primarily internal and evolve in a direction of externalization and fusion with other branches of knowledge. Historically, religions show a similarity of patterns in the development of learning and scholarship methods. For instance, in earlier configurations of integrative studies, a conflict between internal and external is unavoidable since the internal values of the emerging religion are based on a prescriptive (or declarative) style of thinking that presupposes the existence of an inherent circle of unity among its teachings, while the dominant mode of scholarship in the scientific and academic community may view the validity of those presuppositions untenable. Generally speaking, absolutist positions and authoritarian attitudes expressed by the gatekeepers of knowledge in both science and religion have obscured people's clarity of vision and hindered the union of these two essential entities of human life. In the Bahá'í view, universal teachings of religion should be interpreted within the context of the relativity of human comprehension and the historical nature of knowledge."

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+title: "Baháʼí views on science"
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+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
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+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+== Applications ==
+Others have addressed the work of a relationship between science and religion in practical expressions of development. Matthew Weinberg and Arbab, Boicu and Zabihi-Maghaddam, reviewed cases of a social engagement in locally meaningful progress that included a cooperative engagement between religion and science in particular processes.
+The influence of the Bahá'í teaching on science and religion was visible in the practice of the religion dating back to the 1870s in the face of a perception of a lot of superstition of Iranian society and taking a stance towards education, science, and technology. Scholars Filip Boicu and Siyamak Zabihi-Maghaddam underscored the Bahá'í view on education directly related to this teaching of the religion which led to some early Bahá'í schools in Iran. Boicu and Zabihi-Maghaddam, recalling the Bahá'í experience in Iran on early schooling which had been extended about education of girls, followed developments of three models of education - Anisa, FUNDAEC, and the Core Curriculum - all of which had direct applications of the teaching and only being distinguished on the application between the individual alone, the individual in a society, and the last one being of all people in the whole of society and a global community.
+In the early 20th century, as the Bahá'í Faith was expanding in the United States, the Bahá'í community viewed the issue of race according to another Bahá'í principle – the oneness of humanity – which had been expressed earlier but was further substantiated by 1912 during `Abdu'l-Bahá's talks to American audiences. The idea of interracial unity was counter to views of the majority of scientists of the coming decades and for a time in government policies, which endorsed eugenics as legal steps against Indigenous Americans, people of African descent, and generally People of Color, and other practices according to white-society standards, and similarly in other countries such as when the religion was banned in Germany under the Nazis. However, the American Bahá'í community did not respond by denigrating the scholarly thought of the day, but rather by supporting the then-minority view of scholars who opposed scientific racism. Marion Carpenter, a notable early American Bahá'í youth, is quoted in 1925 saying “Not religion or science, but religion and science, the combination of faith and reason, is the teaching of Bahá’u’lláh to the world today.” The American scientist Herbert Miller defended interracial unity at a Bahá'í-sponsored World Unity Conference in 1926 in Cleveland.
+Project analyst Matthew Weinberg outlined socioeconomic development cases using the non-profit ISGP - the Institute for Studies for Global Prosperity, "a non-profit organization working in collaboration with the Baha’i International Community", in India, Uganda, and Brazil. In India stakeholders in a project developed an engagement of religion and science anchored in community of practice was seen as a majority point of view of the participants in the conference and the Indian National Spiritual Assembly established an office - the "Secretariat for the Promotion of the Discourse on Science, Religion, and Development" in 2001. They had successive meetings in 2004 and 2007 and ongoing. In Uganda work reached a point in 2001 working with IGSP that Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni encouraged the work of nurturing social unity "by championing the equality of women and men, alleviating poverty, and overcoming entrenched patterns of corruption." Again materialistic approaches were seen as failing alone. In Brazil again in 2001 a program of action was initiated, seminars were held and a group formed to develop analysis of the system published a book and simultaneously application in some local community "Centers of Learning" and one as a pilot project, but to advance the group needed to approach the work with some values: "To set out on a new path requires courage—not an arrogant disposition that demands swift and radical action, but one that is tempered with humility and wisdom. It requires an environment where the dynamics of individual and collective transformation are fully considered; where it is realized that growth and change are organic, that they are gradual and slow, and that they involve constant action, evaluation, and study; and where it is understood that, in pursuing such transformation, one is faced with an ongoing tension between absorbing setbacks and gaining new ground."
+
+== Influence ==
+Sociologist Michael McMullen found that Bahá'í converts in the United States appreciated the teaching of a harmony between science and religion as resolving their sense of these. They had been disillusioned with traditional organized religion but found that the Bahá'í Faith's use of science to inform religion "makes sense and provides meaning in a globalized world", and appreciated that the Bahá'í Faith had an evolutionary perspective on revelation via the teaching of progressive revelation. Post-doctoral scholar in Ottoman Studies and faculty at the Wilmette Institute, Necati Alkan documented the case of Muslim intellectual Abdullah Cevdet (1869–1932) in looking at the influence of the Bahá'í Faith and the teaching of the harmony of science and religion specifically as a model of reform but which was not accepted by the Turkish Muslim community.
+
+== Baháʼí views on evolution ==
+
+ʻAbdu'l-Bahá discussed evolution, including making claims that appear to contradict the modern doctrine of common descent for all earthly life. For example, in Some Answered Questions he said: 

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+title: "Baháʼí views on science"
+chunk: 5/5
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+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
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+
+...from the beginning of man's existence on this planet until he assumed his present shape, form, and condition, a long time must have elapsed, and he must have traversed many stages before reaching his present condition. But from the beginning of his existence man has been a distinct species.
+His teachings were widely interpreted as a kind of parallel evolution, in which humans had a separate line of descent to some primitive form, separate from animals. But the emphasis on the harmony of science and religion and the success of the modern evolutionary paradigm resulted in at least 19 books and articles from 16 authors over the period of 1990 to 2009 trying to address how Bahá'ís should view evolution in light of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's statements, the majority of which took universal common ancestry as fact and attempted to reconcile with a new interpretation of the statements. Two articles by Keven Brown and Eberhard von Kitzing, jointly published under the title Evolution and Bahá'í Belief (2001), stand out as the only book-length review of the issue by Bahá'ís during the period, and has been well received.
+The new understanding viewed the apparent meaning of parallel evolution as an unfortunate misunderstanding that should be carefully studied and interpreted in terms that make sense today. Gary Matthews wrote,
+
+...the apparent contradiction is nothing more than a question of semantics: perhaps ʻAbdu'l-Bahá is merely dating man's beginning as a distinct species from the soul's first appearance, to emphasize that we do not derive our higher spiritual nature from our animal forebears." 
+This understanding was included in the Foreword to the 2014 printing of Some Answered Questions, stating:
+
+...[ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's] concern is not with the mechanisms of evolution but with the philosophical, social, and spiritual implications of the new theory. His use of the term "species", for example, evokes the concept of eternal or permanent archetypes, which is not how the term is defined in contemporary biology. For Bahá'ís, the science of evolution is accepted..." 
+Not all Bahá'ís were convinced of the argument that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's statements are in complete alignment with modern evolutionary theory. Salman Oskooi wrote his 2009 thesis on the subject and was unconvinced by the various authors trying to reconcile the issue with modern science, writing that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's statements have an "apparent discord with science", "appear uninterpretable in any sense but their apparent meaning", and the apparent meaning is that "humans have been distinct from other beings since the time of some primitive stage of our evolution." Oskooi concluded that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was fallible on scientific matters, but that the issue does not contradict the fundamental premise of the faith. Also in 2009, Ian Kluge wrote that, "There is no question that ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's views on human evolution are in conflict with current scientific thought", but he concluded that religion cannot "uncritically agree with science on all its pronouncements at all times" due to the changing nature of science itself.
+In 2023, Bryan Donaldson published On the Originality of Species, attempting to address the issue from the point of view of new research in evolutionary biology that could plausibly support the idea of "independent and parallel growth of many categories of plants and animals out of a network of gene-sharing unicellular roots." Donaldson points to a variety of trends in evolutionary thought since the late 1990s, concluding that, 
+
+...it is no longer necessary to conclude that the concept of independent or 'parallel' descent is incompatible with science. In fact, the trend of discovery has clearly been in the direction of agreement... This new understanding appears to me to have only been possible since about 2015. 
+
+== See also ==
+Dialectic
+
+== Notes ==
+
+== Citations ==
+
+== References ==
+
+== Further reading ==
+Filson, Gerald. Mind: ‘the Power of the Human Spirit'. Journal of Bahá’í Studies, vol. 32, no. 3-4, July 2023, pp. 9-53.
+Phelps, Steven (2022). "Ch. 17: The harmony of science and religion". In Stockman, Robert H. (ed.). The World of the Bahá'í Faith. Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge. pp. 211–216. ISBN 978-1-138-36772-2.

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+---
+title: "Black cat analogy"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_cat_analogy"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:51.301329+00:00"
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+---
+
+The black cat analogy is an analogy accounting for the differences between science and religion, or in some versions also between other disciplines such as philosophy and metaphysics.
+
+
+== Description ==
+The analogy can be described like this:
+
+Philosophy is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat.
+Metaphysics is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there.
+Theology is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there, and shouting "I found it!"
+Science is like being in a dark room looking for a black cat while using a flashlight.
+Social Science is like being in a dark room suspecting from the beginning that there is a black cat somewhere, and emerging from the room with scratches on the forearm as vindication.
+It can also be applied to other bodies of knowledge or learning, for example by Ernest Gellner to Marxism.
+
+
+== Explanation ==
+Vincent Barry explains the difference between philosophy and theology as lying in the fact that philosophy is scientific and open-minded, concerned with proof, while theologians "have found their final truth" before they begin the search.
+
+
+== Origin ==
+Many variations on the analogy exist, and they have been variously attributed to several famous figures at different times (e.g. misquotations of Charles Darwin), but the quotation has been around since at least the 1890s. Its absolute origin is unknown.
+Wendy Doniger relates it to a French and English proverb: "In the dark, all cats are grey." Hegel criticised naive ideas of the Absolute, which he ridiculed as "like a night, as people say, in which all cows are black." Dashiell Hammett in The Dain Curse (1929) referred to a "blind man in a dark room hunting for a black hat that wasn't there". Ernest Gellner referred to an East European joke about science, philosophy, and Marxism as looking for a cat in a dark room with various consequences: with science the cat is present, with philosophy absent, and with Marxism absent but found.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Black cat
+Relationship between religion and science
+
+
+== References ==

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+---
+title: "ScienceDebate.org"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ScienceDebate.org"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:37.643134+00:00"
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+---
+
+Science Debate is a nonpartisan American nonprofit organization working to elevate the importance of science and technology in the national public dialogue. They ask candidates running of office to share their science policy perspectives before Election Day so that every politician arrives in office prepared to meet the 21st centuries greatest challenges on day one. Driven by the vital role that science and technology play in the health, environmental, and economic well-being of society, Science Debate strives to provide voters with sufficient and meaningful information on these key issues when electing people to serve in public office.
+The organization has the support of 24 Nobel laureates; 172 leaders of scientific institutions; 108 university presidents and provosts; and 55 current and former business leaders (such as company presidents, CEOs, and chairpersons). Well-known signatories include: actors Johnny Depp and Mark Ruffalo, presidential science adviser John Holdren, former energy secretary Steven Chu, inventor Elon Musk, actor/producer David Schwimmer, and educator Bill Nye.
+
+
+== History ==
+
+
+=== Founding of Science Debate ===
+In the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, the lack of discussion about science and technology issues caught the attention of film director and screenwriter Matthew Chapman. Together with science journalist Chris Mooney, science writer Sheril Kirshenbaum, screenwriter and science advocate Shawn Lawrence Otto, theoretical physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss, and science philosopher Austin Dacey, Science Debate 2008 was created. Shortly thereafter, Science Cheerleader founder Darlene Cavalier and science advocate Michael Halpern joined the team.
+Within weeks of its founding, people and organizations from across the political spectrum signed on directly. This included prominent institutions such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the U.S. National Academies, as well as political movers ranging from John Podesta, President Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff, on the left to Newt Gingrich, former House Speaker, on the right.  Collectively, by counting the members in the signatory organizations, Science Debate represents more than 125 million people.
+
+
+=== Science Debate in 2008 ===
+Throughout 2008, there were many calls for the candidates to participate in a science debate.  On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, then nominee Barack Obama agreed to participate in an online “debate.” He formed a science advisory team that included Harold Varmus to help him answer the questions. Days later, Senator John McCain agreed to a “debate” in this format as well. The candidates’ answers to “The Fourteen Top Science Questions Facing America,” covering climate change, energy, health care, space, the environment, and the research drivers of economic competitiveness were published in Nature. Science Debate's story and the candidates' responses made nearly a billion media impressions.
+
+
+=== Science Debate in 2012 ===
+In partnership with Scientific American, Science Debate got President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney to address fourteen questions on some of the biggest scientific and technological challenges facing the nation.  Scientific American, the group’s media partner in 2012, published the answers and rated them based on the current science.  The process of soliciting responses from the candidates and subsequent analysis of the answers was the subject of much conversation in the media during both the primaries and general election.
+
+
+=== Science Debate in 2016 ===
+For the 2016 election cycle, Science Debate signed with a major television network as a media partner. On October 8, 2015, Science Debate and Research!America commissioned a poll of American attitudes about science and politics. Conducted with 1,002 American adults of voting age, an overwhelming majority (87%) said it is important that candidates for President and Congress have a basic understanding of the science informing public policy issues, including majorities across the political spectrum (92% of Democrats, 90% of Republicans, and 79% of Independents). Americans also said the presidential candidates should participate in a debate to discuss key science-based challenges facing the United States, such as healthcare, climate change, energy, education, innovation and the economy (91% of Democrats, 88% of Republicans and 78% of Independents). The poll prompted major news outlets to ask why the candidates aren't addressing science issues.
+On January 11, 2016, Science Debate released a PSA in which children ask the candidates for President to discuss various scientific issues including climate change, clean drinking water and the honey bee colony collapse problem.  The video garnered significant media coverage, inspiring writers to echo the children's call for increased discussion of science.  
+On August 10 2016, Science Debate released the 20 top science questions. All four major candidates: President Donald Trump, Senator Hillary Clinton, Governor Gary Johnson, and Jill Stein responded in writing to the 2016 Science Debate Q&A.”
+
+
+=== Science Debate in 2018 ===
+In 2018, Science Debate expanded to ask all 2018 House, Senate and Gubernatorial candidates to participate in answering 10 questions about science policy. The first responses were released on January 3, 2018.
+
+
+=== Science Debate in 2023 ===
+In spring of 2023, Science Debate was renamed Science on the Ballot and joined the National Science Policy Network.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website

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+---
+title: "Sociobiology Study Group"
+chunk: 1/1
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+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:38.906486+00:00"
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+---
+
+The Sociobiology Study Group was an academic organization formed to specifically counter sociobiological explanations of human behavior, particularly those expounded by the Harvard entomologist E. O. Wilson in Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975). The group formed in Boston, Massachusetts and consisted of both professors and students, predominantly left-wing and Marxist.
+Members of the Sociobiology Study Group included Richard C. Lewontin (geneticist, Harvard University), Stephen Jay Gould (paleontologist, Harvard University), Jon Beckwith (Harvard Medical School), Stephan Chorover (psychologist, MIT), David Culver (biologist, Northwestern University), Ruth Hubbard (biologist, Harvard University), Anthony Leeds (anthropologist, Boston University), Margaret Duncan (research assistant, Harvard Medical School), Hiroshi Inouye (resident fellow, Harvard Medical School), Chuck Madansky (graduate student, Harvard Medical School), Lawrence G. Miller (medical student, Harvard Medical School) Miriam Rosenthal (research associate, Harvard School of Public Health), Reed Pyeritz (doctor, Peter Bent Brigham Hospital), and Herb Schreier (psychiatrist, Massachusetts General Hospital).
+The Sociobiology Study Group later associated itself with the Boston chapter of Science for the People, thereby forming a larger coalition "The Sociobiology Study Group of Science for the People." The group met monthly, and often held meetings at Harvard lecture halls and in the homes of its members. The meetings often included guests such as Noam Chomsky and Evelyn Fox Keller.
+
+
+== AAAS Symposium ==
+
+In February 1978 George Barlow and James Silverberg of the Sociobiology Study Group organized a two-day symposium at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington D.C. The proceedings included approximately twenty speakers, and included both advocates and critics alike. Speakers included such scientists as Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, E. O. Wilson, and David Barash. The talks were later published into the book Sociobiology: Beyond Nature/Nurture? by Westview Press (1980).
+
+
+== See also ==
+Nature versus nurture controversy
+British Society for Social Responsibility in Science
+Science wars
+
+
+== References ==

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+title: "Space policy"
+chunk: 1/4
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+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
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+---
+
+Space policy is the political decision-making process for, and application of, public policy of a state (or association of states) regarding spaceflight and uses of outer space, both for civilian (scientific and commercial) and military purposes. International treaties, such as the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, attempt to maximize the peaceful uses of space and restrict the militarization of space.
+Space policy intersects with science policy, since national space programs often perform or fund research in space science, and also with defense policy, for applications such as spy satellites and anti-satellite weapons.  It also encompasses government regulation of third-party activities such as commercial communications satellites and private spaceflight.
+Space policy also encompasses the creation and application of space law, and space advocacy organizations exist to support the cause of space exploration.
+
+== Space law ==
+
+Space law is an area of the law that encompasses national and international law governing activities in outer space. There are currently six treaties that make up the body of international space law.
+The inception of the field of space law began with the launch of the world's first artificial satellite by the Soviet Union in October 1957. Named Sputnik 1, the satellite was launched as part of the International Geophysical Year. Since that time, space law has evolved and assumed more importance as mankind has increasingly come to use and rely on space-based resources.
+International space law consists of six international treaties, five declarations and principles, and other United Nations (UN) General Assembly resolutions. The UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) is primarily responsible for the implementation of international space law, and helps advise governments and non-governmental organizations on space law.
+
+=== International treaties ===
+All treaties below except the Partial Test Ban Treaty were adopted by the UN General Assembly. The Partial Test Ban Treaty, being the first, was signed by the governments of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States in Moscow on August 5, 1963, before it was opened for signature by other countries.
+
+==== Partial Test Ban Treaty ====
+The Partial Test Ban Treaty was entered into force on October 10, 1963. The treaty prohibits nuclear weapons tests or nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water. It also prohibits nuclear explosions underground if they cause "radioactive debris to be present outside the territorial limits of the State under whose jurisdiction or control" the explosions were conducted.
+With increased knowledge of the effects of nuclear fallout, the issue of nuclear tests and the resultant radioactive debris drew intensified public attention. As the treaty does not outright ban nuclear tests underground, hundreds of such tests were conducted in the following decades. The Partial Test Ban Treaty is seen as the first step towards global nuclear disarmament. Continued efforts in this direction include increasing public awareness through events such as the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.
+
+==== Outer Space Treaty ====
+The Outer Space Treaty was ratified on October 10, 1967. Key provisions of the treaty include prohibiting nuclear weapons in space; limiting the use of the Moon and all other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes; establishing that space shall be freely explored and used by all nations; and precluding any country from claiming sovereignty over outer space or any celestial body.
+International challenges to the Outer Space Treaty have been attempted. Most prominently is the Bogota Declaration which asserts sovereignty over those portions of the geostationary orbit that continuously lie over the signatory nations' territory. The declaration has been signed by seven equatorial countries: Ecuador, Colombia, Congo, Zaire (in 1997 renamed to the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Uganda, Kenya, and Indonesia. These claims did not receive wider international support or recognition, and were subsequently largely abandoned.
+With the increase of private satellites and counter-space technologies since 2016, there have been calls for an update to the Outer Space Treaty. This topic, amongst others, was discussed in 2021 at the annual Outer Space Security Conference in Geneva, Switzerland.
+
+==== Rescue Agreement ====
+The Rescue Agreement was ratified on December 3, 1968. The agreement's provisions elaborate on the rescue provisions set forth by the Outer Space Treaty. The agreement essentially requires that any state party to the agreement, upon becoming aware that the personnel of a spacecraft are in distress, must notify the launching authority and the Secretary General of the United Nations, and must provide all possible assistance to rescue the personnel of a spacecraft who have landed within that state's territory. Moreover, if the distress occurs in an area that is beyond the territory of any nation, then any state party that is in a position to do so shall, if necessary, extend assistance in the search and rescue operation.
+At the time the agreement was drafted, rescuing travelers in space was unlikely, due to the limited launch capabilities of even the most advanced space programs. More recently, it has become more plausible. The Rescue Agreement has been criticized for being vague, especially regarding the definition of who is entitled to be rescued and the definition of what constitutes a spacecraft and its component parts. With the recent increase of commercial spaceflight providers, this distinction has become more relevant, raising questions as to whether space tourists are covered by the term "personnel of a spacecraft" used in the agreement. There have been calls to revisit these issues in international space law.

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_policy-1.md

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+---
+title: "Space policy"
+chunk: 2/4
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_policy"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:40.309263+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+==== Liability Convention ====
+The Liability Convention was ratified on September 1, 1972. The treaty expands on the liability rules created in the Outer Space Treaty. Its provisions state that a state bears international responsibility for all space objects that are launched within their territory. This means that regardless of who launches the space object, if it was launched from State A's territory, or from State A's facility, or if State A caused the launch to happen, then State A is fully liable for damages that result from that space object. In 1978, the crash of the nuclear-powered Soviet satellite Kosmos 954 in Canadian territory led to the only claim filed under the convention. More recently, in July and October 2021, China's Tiangong space station, with three astronauts aboard, performed "evasive maneuver(s)" to avoid collision with SpaceX's Starlink satellites. The Liability Convention does not introduce legal penalties for leaving space debris in Earth's orbit.
+
+==== Registration Convention ====
+The Registration Convention was ratified on September 15, 1976. The convention's provisions require states to provide details such as date and location of launch, as well as basic orbital parameters to the United Nations for each space object.
+
+==== Moon Agreement ====
+The Moon Agreement was ratified on July 11, 1984. The agreement is a multilateral treaty that turns jurisdiction of all celestial bodies (including the orbits around such bodies) over to the participant countries. Thus, all activities would conform to international law, including the United Nations Charter. It has not been ratified by any state that engages in self-launched human spaceflight (e.g. the United States, Russia, People's Republic of China), and thus it has little to no relevancy in international law.
+
+== Policy by country ==
+
+=== United States ===
+
+United States space policy is drafted by the Executive branch at the direction of the President of the United States, and submitted for approval and establishment of funding to the legislative process of the United States Congress. The President may also negotiate with other nations and sign space treaties on behalf of the US, according to his or her constitutional authority. Congress' final space policy product is, in the case of domestic policy a bill explicitly stating the policy objectives and the budget appropriation for their implementation to be submitted to the President for signature into law, or else a ratified treaty with other nations.
+Space advocacy organizations (such as the Space Science Institute, National Space Society, and the Space Generation Advisory Council, learned societies such as the American Astronomical Society and the American Astronautical Society; and policy organizations such as the National Academies) may provide advice to the government and lobby for space goals.
+Civilian and scientific space policy is carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, subsequent to 29 July 1958), and military space activities (communications, reconnaissance, intelligence, mapping, and missile defense) are carried out by various agencies of the Department of Defense. The President is legally responsible for deciding which space activities fall under the civilian and military areas. In addition, the Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration operates various services with space components, such as the Landsat program.
+The President consults with NASA and Department of Defense on their space activity plans, as potential input for the policy draft submitted to Congress and  consults with the National Security Council, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the Office of Management and Budget to take into account Congress's expected willingness to provide necessary funding levels for proposed programs.
+Once the President's policy draft or treaty is submitted to the Congress, civilian policies are reviewed by the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics and the Senate Subcommittee on Science and Space. These committees also exercise oversight over NASA's operations and investigation of accidents such as the 1967 Apollo 1 fire. Military policies are reviewed and overseen by the House Subcommittee on Strategic Forces and the Senate Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, as well as the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee conducts hearings on proposed space treaties, and the various appropriations committees have power over the budgets for space-related agencies.  Space policy efforts are supported by Congressional agencies such as the Congressional Research Service, the Congressional Budget Office, and Government Accountability Office.
+
+==== History ====

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+---
+title: "Space policy"
+chunk: 3/4
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_policy"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:40.309263+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+The early history of United States space policy is linked to the US–Soviet Space Race of the 1960s.  The National Aeronautics and Space Act creating NASA was passed in 1958, after the launch of the Soviet Sputnik 1 satellite. Thereafter, in response to the flight of Yuri Gagarin as the first man in space, Kennedy in 1961 committed the United States to landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade.  Although the costs of the Vietnam War and the programs of the Great Society forced cuts to NASA's budget as early as 1965, the first Moon landing occurred in 1969, early in Richard Nixon's presidency.  Under the Nixon administration NASA's budget continued to decline and three of the planned Apollo Moon landings were cancelled.  The Nixon administration approved the beginning of the Space Shuttle program in 1972, but did not support funding of other projects such as a Mars landing, colonization of the Moon, or a permanent space station.
+The Space Shuttle first launched in 1981, during Ronald Reagan's administration.  Reagan in 1982 announced a renewed active space effort, which included initiatives such the construction of Space Station Freedom, and the military Strategic Defense Initiative, and, later in his term, a 30 percent increase in NASA's budget.  The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in January 1986 led to a reevaluation of the future of the national space program in the National Commission on Space report and the Ride Report.
+The United States has participated in the International Space Station beginning in the 1990s, the Space Shuttle program has continued, although the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster has led to the planned retirement of the Space Shuttle in mid-2011.  There is a current debate on the post-Space Shuttle future of the civilian space program: the Constellation program of the George W. Bush administration directed NASA to create a set of new spacecraft with the goal of sending astronauts to the Moon and Mars, but the Obama administration cancelled the Constellation program, opting instead to emphasize development of commercial rocket systems.
+The Vision for Space Exploration established under the George W. Bush administration in 2004 was replaced with a new policy released by Barack Obama on 28 June 2010.
+In recent years, U.S. space operators and decisionmakers have become increasingly concerned about threats to U.S. space leadership. In the civil sector, this has been driven largely by U.S. dependence on Russia for crew access to the International Space Station (ISS) since the termination of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. In national security, foreign development of counterspace systems has become a regular feature of public statements by U.S. defense and intelligence officials. This is reminiscent of similar concerns about the Soviet Union's space program between the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957 and the success of the Apollo lunar missions. The threat of Soviet dominance in space turned out to be less formidable than expected, but it continued to drive policy and programmatic decisions for decades, until the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
+
+=== Europe ===
+
+The European Space Agency (ESA) is the common space agency for many European nations.  It is independent of the European Union, though the 2007 European Space Policy provides a framework for coordination between the two organizations and member states, including issues such as security and defence, access to space, space science, and space exploration.
+The ESA was founded to serve as a counterweight to the dominant United States and Soviet space programs, and further the economic and military independence of Europe.  This has included the development of the Ariane rockets, which by 1985 had captured over 40 percent of commercial launch market in the free world.  The ESA budget is split between mandatory and voluntary programs, the latter of which allow individual member nations to pursue their own national space goals within the organization.
+The ESA Director General's Proposal for the European Space Policy states, "Space systems are strategic assets demonstrating independence and the readiness to assume global responsibilities. Initially developed as defence or scientific projects, they now also provide commercial infrastructures on which important sectors of the economy depend and which are relevant in the daily life of citizens....  Europe needs an effective space policy to enable it to exert global leadership in selected policy areas in accordance with European interests and values."
+In the final part of 2010s the ESA has made strong efforts in order to make Europe stronger in the competition for the development of new strategies regarding space policy. Those included a huge increase in ESA's budget promoted by countries such as Italy, France and Germany.
+
+=== China ===
+
+Although Chairman Mao Zedong planned after Russia's Sputnik 1 launch to place a Chinese satellite in orbit by 1959 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC), China did not successfully launch its first satellite until 24 April 1970. Mao and Zhou Enlai decided on 14 July 1967 that the PRC should not be left behind, and started China's own human spaceflight program. The first success came on 15 October 2003 when China sent its first astronaut into space for 21 hours aboard Shenzhou 5.
+The Ministry of Aerospace Industry was responsible for the Chinese space program prior to July 1999, when it was split into the China National Space Administration responsible for setting policy, and the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, responsible for implementation.
+The China National Space Administration states its aims as maintaining the country's overall development strategy, making innovations in an independent and self-reliant manner, promoting the country's science and technology sector and encouraging economic and social development, and actively engaging in international cooperation.

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+---
+title: "Space policy"
+chunk: 4/4
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_policy"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:40.309263+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+=== Russia and Ukraine ===
+Russia inherited its space programs in 1991 from its predecessor state, the Soviet Union. Russia's civilian space agency is the Russian Federal Space Agency and its military counterpart is the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces. Ukraine's agency is the State Space Agency of Ukraine, which handles both civilian and military programs.
+The Soviet Union became the world's first spacefaring state by launching its first satellite, Sputnik 1, on 4 October 1957. The Soviet space program was active from 1955 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
+In the 1980s the Soviet Union was considered to be technologically behind the United States, but it outspent the United States in its space budget, and its cosmonauts had spent three times as many days in space as American astronauts. The Soviet Union had also been more willing than the United States to embark on long-term programs, such as the Salyut and Mir space station programs, and increased their investment in space programs throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
+After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the 1990s saw serious financial problems because of the decreased cash flow, which encouraged Roskosmos to improvise and seek other ways to keep space programs running. This resulted in Roskosmos' leading role in commercial satellite launches and space tourism. While scientific missions, such as interplanetary probes or astronomy missions during these years played a very small role, although Roskosmos has connections with Russian aerospace forces, its budget is not part of the defense budget of the country, Roskosmos managed to operate the space station Mir well past its planned lifespan, contribute to the International Space Station, and continue to fly additional Soyuz and Progress missions.
+The Russian economy boomed throughout 2005 from high prices for exports, such as oil and gas, and the outlook for subsequent funding became more favorable. The federal space budget for the year 2009 was left unchanged despite the global economic crisis, standing at around 82 billion rubles ($2.4 billion). Current priorities of the Russian space program include the new Angara rocket family and development of new communications, navigation and remote Earth sensing spacecraft. The GLONASS global navigation satellite system has for many years been one of the top priorities and has been given its own budget line in the federal space budget.
+
+=== India ===
+
+The purpose of India's space program was outlined by Vikram Sarabhai (regarded as the father of the Indian space program):
+
+There are some who question the relevance of space activities in a developing nation. To us, there is no ambiguity of purpose....we are convinced that if we are to play a meaningful role nationally, and in the community of nations, we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society.
+The Department of Space (DoS) is the Indian government department responsible for administration of the Indian space program. It manages several agencies and institutes related to space exploration and space technologies. The Indian space program under the DoS aims to promote the development and application of space science and technology for the socio-economic benefit of the country. It includes two major satellite systems, INSAT for communication, television broadcasting and meteorological services, and Indian Remote Sensing Satellites (IRS) system for resources monitoring and management. It has also developed two satellite launch vehicles, Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), to place IRS and INSAT class satellites in orbit.
+
+== See also ==
+
+== References ==
+
+== External links ==
+European Space Policy Institute
+Space Policy – Academic Journal
+Space Policy Resource Websites
+Center for Space Policy and Strategy at The Aerospace Corporation
+US Space Policy Archive – collected by the Center for Space Policy and Strategy
+Space Security Portal at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research
+Space Policy - Outer Space Policy, Politics and Law – Blog by Dr Jill Stuart

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Committee_on_Science,_Space,_and_Technology-0.md

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+---
+title: "United States House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Committee_on_Science,_Space,_and_Technology"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:41.598488+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+The Committee on Science, Space, and Technology is a committee of the United States House of Representatives. It has jurisdiction over non-defense federal scientific research and development. More specifically, the committee has complete jurisdiction over the following federal agencies: NASA, NSF, NIST, and the OSTP. The committee also has authority over R&D activities at the Department of Energy, the EPA, FAA, NOAA, the DOT, the NWS, the DHS and the U.S. Fire Administration.
+
+
+== History ==
+In the wake of the Soviet Sputnik program in the late 1950s, Congress created the Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration on 5 March 1958, chaired by majority leader John William McCormack, on the advice of National Defense Analyst Eilene Galloway. This select committee drafted the National Aeronautics and Space Act that created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). A staff report of the committee, the Space Handbook: Astronautics and its Applications, provided non-technical information about spaceflight to U.S. policy makers.
+The committee also chartered the permanent House Committee on Science and Astronautics, which officially began on January 3, 1959, and was the first new standing committee established in the House since 1946. The name was changed in 1974 to the House Committee on Science and Technology. The name was changed again in 1987 to the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. After the Republican Party gained a majority in Congress in 1994, the name of the committee was changed to the House Committee on Science. With the return of control to the Democrats in 2007, the committee's name was changed back to the House Committee on Science and Technology.
+During the 112th Congress, which was in session from 2011–2013, committee chair Ralph Hall added "Space" back into the committee's name: "The Committee on Science, Space, and Technology" – a nod to the committee's history, broad jurisdiction, and the importance of space exploration in maintaining American innovation and competitiveness.
+
+
+== Members, 119th Congress ==
+
+Resolutions electing members: H.Res. 13 (Chair), H.Res. 14 (Ranking Member), H.Res. 42 (R), H.Res. 44 (D), H.Res. 430 (Foster), H.Res. 940 (Van Epps), H.Res. 1048 (Menefee)
+
+
+== Subcommittees ==
+
+
+== Committee leadership ==
+Chairs and ranking members are listed below.
+
+
+== Historical membership rosters ==
+
+
+=== 118th Congress ===
+
+Resolutions electing members: H.Res. 14 (Chair), H.Res. 15 (Ranking Member), H.Res. 80 (R), H.Res. 87 (D), H.Res. 164 (D), H.Res. 179 (R), H.Res. 205 (D), H.Res. 931 (D)
+
+Subcommittees
+
+
+=== 117th Congress ===
+
+Resolutions electing members: H.Res. 9 (Chair), H.Res. 10 (Ranking Member), H.Res. 62 (D), H.Res. 63 (R), H.Res. 111 (D), H.Res. 475 (D), H.Res. 602 (R), H.Res. 826 (R)
+
+Subcommittees
+
+
+=== 116th Congress ===
+
+Sources: H.Res. 24 (Chair), H.Res. 25 (Ranking Member), H.Res. 67 (D), H.Res. 68 (R), H.Res. 73 (D), H.Res. 264 (R), H.Res. 516 (R), H.Res. 596 (R), H.Res. 712 (D), H.Res. 1037 (R)
+
+Subcommittees
+There were five subcommittees in the 116th Congress.
+
+
+=== 115th Congress ===
+
+
+== See also ==
+List of United States House of Representatives committees
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+
+Official web site (Archive)
+House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. Legislation activity and reports, Congress.gov.
+Republican Science Committee website
+Works by United States House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology at Project Gutenberg
+Works by or about United States House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology at the Internet Archive