Please see review on my blog: Underground Man:

http://undergroundmangeomatt.blogspot... ( )

Davies discusses modern physics and summarizes scientists views on why the universe is so perfectly set up to enable life (and consequent intelligent understanding). Only the slightest modifications of the laws of physics would make life impossible so why are these laws the way they are and so improbably suitable?
He shows the tendency of the scientific community to avoid the issue, but answers range from a multiverse in which ours is the lucky one among many (or infinite number), to a self aware intelligent universe generating suitable laws (in the future) with backward causation effected by manipulating time in some unknown way.
He sees human (or consequent machine) intelligence as a fundamental force in its own right, at the moment in a very early stage, but capable of growing over future hundreds of millions of years to a galactic scale. He quotes the idea that a future intelligence altering the functioning of the sun would generate errors for a distant observer that would seem to indicate a failure of physical laws.
Backward causation, or at least selection of outcomes, is supported by Wheelers variant of the two slit light wave/particle experiment and he favours an unknown mechanism behind this by which the future selects between the myriad of past and present possibilities to "enable" itself. Optimum physical laws are then not a "Cosmic Jackpot" but rather a calculated and selected necessity.
A tremendously good and thought provoking book. ( )

When mind and cosmos will be one.

The primary purpose of Paul Davies in Goldilocks Enigma is to appeal to scientific inquiry and reason in order to address the big questions of existence.
Why does theoretical physics work?
Why is nature shadowed by the mathematical reality?
Is a theory of everything possible?
How did the universe begin?
And most the most important: Why is the universe fit for life?

Davies analyses the ideas and the developments of theoretical physics the last fifty years and and examines current state of cosmology and fundamental physics.
The same time offers his personal interpretation of why the university is “just right” for life. His inclination lie in the direction of the bio-friendliness of the universe and that it operates at a much deeper level than the passive “winners in a random lottery” explanation. Davies takes life, mind and purpose seriously, and he concedes “that the university appears to be designed with a high level of ingenuity”.

The Goldilocks Enigma is a fascinating and challenging book to read. It is not an easy reading but I enjoying it a great deal. If you are interested in the big questions of existence this book is a must read. ( )

Very good. Expanding ( )