Discussion Questions for Just Six Numbers (Martin Rees)

Chapter 1: The cosmos and the microworld

1. "An infinity of other universes may well exist where the numbers are different.  Most would be stillborn or sterile.  We could only have emerged (...and find ourselves) in a universe with the 'right' combination."  Rees offers this "radical" new perspective in making an early justification for fine structure.  Is this circular reasoning?  What would it mean for a universe to "exist" and at the same time be unobservable by humans?  What does existence mean?

2. Steinbeck writes (as quoted in the chapter) "Man is related inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable..."  What is unknowable reality?  How can we be linked to it?  He also writes, "It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again."  What are the implications of this advice to the practice of science?

3. What is Rees' argument for why the Universe is so big?  Why does it take so long to produce heavy elements like carbon (not even that heavy)?  Is this denial of a "smaller universe" really justified anthropocentric ideology, as Rees claims?  And even if it is justified, is the vastness of the Universe really unsurprising?

4. Rees spends considerable time discussing orders of magnitude, using the standard ouraborus as a symbol of man's placement in the middle of the big and small.  How to the very large and very small affect us in similar ways.  How do they fundamentally depend on each other?  Does this connect to their unified origins in the first moments of the Big Bang?