[nando80]

Hi all,
My opinion is that the role played by life and especially intelligent life has been neglected in physical theories. Anthropic principles are one step towards recognizing that intelligent life has a role to play in life of the universe. However, anthropism does not go far enough.
My proposed alternative is:
Intelligent life (IL) is just a development of processes happening in the universe as a whole, by which energy tends to get itself organized in complex forms. Thus, IL does not differ in its basic nature from other more basic forms in which energy organize itself, like quanta for example.
As IL develops, it tends to seek for increasingly more concentrated forms of energy. (wood, coal, petrol, eletricity, nuclear, quantic, etc...) This process coincides with the findings of smaller particles, which contains energy stored under extremely concentrated forms. This might have a potential to trigger events from the magnitude of big bangs. Therefore, it would not be absurd to admit that our universe started when an extremely concentrated particle of energy was accidentally discovered. If this is the case, we owe our existence to this "discovery". Of course the "discoverers" would have most probably ceased existing before they could realise what they have caused.
I am not saying that this must necessarily happen in every universe. Neither am I saying that universes must necessarily develop in a way which makes IL possible. But if our universe "fails", it will freeze to death when star's fuel is completely consumed and expansion will spread its remaing energy until their traces can be no longer detectable. This is not very apalling, either.
The result of admiting that IL has a role to play in the development of universes makes sense of life in relation to a physical context, at least. It is a third way between seing life and the universe either as mere accidents, or as a necessary occurrences.
However, it does still allow for questioning the purpose of existence in general. Furthermore, its does not ignores that we can make choices, and that these choices alter the course of our universe. Even though the feeling that we can make choices is problably just an illusory one.
Best,