Olin Lathrop wrote:

> RussellMc wrote:
>>> Of these, how many have naturally occurring liquid water? Only two
>>> that I'm aware of, and the second is mostly a guess because it is
>>> expected to have oceans under ice.
>>=20
>> If "naturally occurring" includes having it carried in naturally by
>> comets, then probably N.=20
>>=20
>> The lunar southern polar ice appears to lie in shaded areas at
>> shallow depths or effectively on the surface from cometary
>> deposition.
>=20
> Note I was referring to *liquid* water.  This was a response to
> someone claiming that the physical constants and such were all rather
> convenient, and cited liquid water, room temperature, and the
> combination thereof as evidence.

If you've seen frozen tissue (animal or plant) that was alive before
frozen, you probably stop thinking that the freezing point and freezing
behavior is "convenient" :)

I think this is mostly a moot discussion, as it is all in the eyes of
the beholder. Most of us here are engineers or have an engineer's
attitude towards world, and for an engineer solving problems of the
physical world is his idea of fun. Most of the problems engineers solve
are inconveniences of the physical world. So the mere fact of our
existence is proof enough that the physical world is inconvenient. That
we tend not to see it that way is simply because we see physical
inconveniences as opportunities for having fun. (Well, not always, but
you get the idea.)

The rest is also obvious... we look mainly for what's helpful for us,
and tend to consider other results maybe interesting, but secondary.
Even if a single individual could develop a non-anthropocentric view of
the world, the body of scientific knowledge has been created by millions
of contributors with anthropocentric views and necessarily reflects
that. So that single individual that was successful in shedding the
anthropocentric viewpoint could not use science at all to look at the
world when trying to maintain the non-anthropocentric viewpoint.

Gerhard
--=20
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