Physics is driven by a desire to explain why the universe has the structure it does. But when confronted with the puzzle of fine-tuning—the uncanny precision of physical constants necessary for life—physics often turns to the anthropic principle. The argument runs: the universe must permit observers like us, otherwise we would not be here to notice.
On the surface, this seems like an explanatory breakthrough. In practice, it is an ontological evasion: contingency is explained by reference to the fact of our existence, rather than by rethinking how relational actualisation makes such contingency possible.
The evasive manoeuvre
The anthropic principle sidesteps the question “why these constants?” by declaring the question meaningless. Our universe’s parameters are treated as inevitable, since only such a universe could host beings capable of asking. The puzzle of alignment is displaced onto the audience: because we are here, the cosmos must be thus.
This manoeuvre preserves the formal system by deferring the explanatory burden to observation itself. Physics avoids the challenge of reconceiving relation by collapsing explanation into tautology.
The ontological cost
By outsourcing explanation to the observer, the anthropic principle undermines ontology altogether. Constants become brute facts. Actualisation is erased: nothing about the relational dynamics of the cosmos is clarified, only the fact that observers happen to emerge within certain bounds.
The principle reduces contingency to necessity by appeal to selection bias, flattening the perspectival openness of possibility into a self-justifying inevitability. Relation itself vanishes behind the mask of “we exist, therefore so it must be.”
The epistemic collapse
Once explanation collapses into tautology, science forfeits its capacity to generate understanding. Any configuration of laws or constants becomes “explained” by the existence—or non-existence—of observers. Predictive and falsifiable claims evaporate. Physics slides into circularity: the universe is this way because otherwise we would not be here to ask.
The theological return
Despite its secular garb, the anthropic principle echoes theological reasoning. It invokes a cosmic privilege for observers, a universe tailored to accommodate our existence. In effect, the principle reinstates a human-centred cosmology under the guise of rational explanation.
A relational reframing
Relational ontology offers a way out. Constants and constraints are not brute facts but emergent features of relational alignment across scales. Actualisation selects configurations that sustain coherence; possibility is perspectival, not arbitrary. Fine-tuning reflects the self-organising dynamics of relational actualisation, not an audience-centred inevitability.
Here, observers are not privileged outcomes but participants within a broader relational unfolding. Contingency is intelligible because relation structures possibility, not because existence requires it.
Conclusion
The anthropic principle exemplifies ontological evasion at its most self-referential: an explanation that explains nothing, substituting circularity for understanding. A relational reframing restores intelligibility by treating fine-tuning as emergent alignment, not as necessity masquerading as tautology.