"Whitrow... proposed an anthropic resolution of the venerable philosophical question Why physical space has three dimensions? (arguing that with a space of different dimensionality there would be no living being to pose the question) and, similarly to [Grigory Moiseevich] Idlis, alluded around 1955 to an anthropic explanation of the size of the observable universe. Anyway, he never published these last ideas, which were developed years later by Wheeler. The only reference to Whitrow’s argument that appeared in print during the 1950s seems to be that due to the philosopher of religion Eric Lionel Mascall, who attributed to the English’s mathematician thatit may be necessary for the universe to have the enormous size and complexity which modern astronomy has revealed, in order for the earth to be a possible habitation for living beings."
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Mathematicians from EnglandAcademics from the United KingdomCosmologistsAstronomers from EnglandHistorians of science
Original Language: English
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Stefano Bettini, "Anthropic Reasoning in Cosmology: A Historical Perspective" (2004)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gerald_James_Whitrow
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Gerald James Whitrow
Gerald James Whitrow (9 June 1912 – 2 June 2000) or G. J. Whitrow, was a British mathematician, cosmologist and historian of science.
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