It would be reassuring to most people to discover that the universe is constructed to favor life. If the human race isn't a freakish outcome of highly improbable chance events, we have every right to see the universe as our home. But this psychological reassurance strikes physicists and biologists as wishful thinking; the bulwark of modern science, from the most minuscule events at the quantum scale to the Big Bang itself, is the assumption that creation is random, without guidance, plan, mind or purpose.
Only very slowly has such a blanket view been challenged, but these new challenges are among the most exciting possibilities in science. We'd like to outline the argument for a "human universe" with an eye to understanding why the human race exists. This question is too central to be left to a small cadre of professional cosmologists and evolutionary biologists; everyone has a personal stake in it.
To read more, click here.