Repeat after me: scientific method does not deal with unique events or entities.
I don’t think this is true in any meaningful sense. It routinely happens in astronomy or geology that we have a single instance of something and study it closely. For instance, I believe Oklo is the only site known to have had natural nuclear chain reactions. And nobody thinks studying the planet Venus is unscientific because there’s only one such planet.
You might say “ah, but we have many observations of Venus.” Well, we have many observations of the universe, too!
If a unique entity or event can be analyzed using the same theories and tools as other entities, it’s fair game for science. And the people who do anthropics are trying to apply statistics, which is a pretty general tool. You might think their methods are unscientific, but it’s not clear to me why the topic is objectionable.
Imagine a universe comprised entirely of moving white balls. We study them and have a model that can predict their movements.
Suddenly, a black ball appears. We have never seen one before. But we observe it and find that it obeys the same laws of motion. So we conclude that the black ball is not unique in a sense that it is a BALL. We observed a lot of balls before.
But we never observed a BLACK ball before and if it remains unique, there is nothing science can tell us about its blackness.
The same thing applies to Venus. If we would invent a discipline called Venusology that only studies Venuses as a whole, as defined by a set of planets that are exactly similar to Venus, than that discipline won’t be able to do anything unless more than one Venus is observed. Until than, Venus would remain a unique phenomenon. But that’s not how Venus is actually studied.
When we study the orbital motion of Venus, it is not unique—just one of the objects that influenced to gravity.
When we study the chemical composition of Venus’ atmosphere, it’s not unique—the elements it’s composed of are not unique, and there are other planets with atmospheres.
When we study the geological features on Venus, they are not unique as well.
At that point you should realize that we don’t study Venus as a phenomenon—we study different aspects of Venus that we can apply the scientific method to. And the reason we can apply it is because the aspects are not unique.
The same things applies to the universe. We don’t have many observations of the universe, we have many observations of different parts of the universe. But if we want to study the whole universe as a phenomenon, then it becomes just one observation. And you can’t do anything scientific about it unless you observe another universe. (At which point you would have a new concept, the Multiverse, which again would be unique).
I don’t think this is true in any meaningful sense. It routinely happens in astronomy or geology that we have a single instance of something and study it closely. For instance, I believe Oklo is the only site known to have had natural nuclear chain reactions. And nobody thinks studying the planet Venus is unscientific because there’s only one such planet.
You might say “ah, but we have many observations of Venus.” Well, we have many observations of the universe, too!
If a unique entity or event can be analyzed using the same theories and tools as other entities, it’s fair game for science. And the people who do anthropics are trying to apply statistics, which is a pretty general tool. You might think their methods are unscientific, but it’s not clear to me why the topic is objectionable.
Let me think of an example...
Imagine a universe comprised entirely of moving white balls. We study them and have a model that can predict their movements.
Suddenly, a black ball appears. We have never seen one before. But we observe it and find that it obeys the same laws of motion. So we conclude that the black ball is not unique in a sense that it is a BALL. We observed a lot of balls before.
But we never observed a BLACK ball before and if it remains unique, there is nothing science can tell us about its blackness.
The same thing applies to Venus. If we would invent a discipline called Venusology that only studies Venuses as a whole, as defined by a set of planets that are exactly similar to Venus, than that discipline won’t be able to do anything unless more than one Venus is observed. Until than, Venus would remain a unique phenomenon. But that’s not how Venus is actually studied.
When we study the orbital motion of Venus, it is not unique—just one of the objects that influenced to gravity. When we study the chemical composition of Venus’ atmosphere, it’s not unique—the elements it’s composed of are not unique, and there are other planets with atmospheres. When we study the geological features on Venus, they are not unique as well.
At that point you should realize that we don’t study Venus as a phenomenon—we study different aspects of Venus that we can apply the scientific method to. And the reason we can apply it is because the aspects are not unique.
The same things applies to the universe. We don’t have many observations of the universe, we have many observations of different parts of the universe. But if we want to study the whole universe as a phenomenon, then it becomes just one observation. And you can’t do anything scientific about it unless you observe another universe. (At which point you would have a new concept, the Multiverse, which again would be unique).