We discussed Week 4 of “Philosophy and the Sciences: Introduction to the Philosophy of Physical Sciences” the course from Edinburgh University here.  The topic was The Anthropic Principle and the Multiverse.  We were OK with the weak anthropic principle: the kind of observers we are will set restraints on the kind of conditions that we are likely to observe.  We are less convinced by the strong anthropic principle: the evolution of observers like us suggests it's overwhelmingly likely that the universe is such as to permit the evolution of creatures like us.  On the multiverse, yes, our universe is so fortunately “Goldilocks” with so many physical consonants, dimensions and evolutionary path that is tempting to posit many other universes to explain it as a low probability instance of many universes, and it is presumptuous to consider ourselves unique.  But the multiverse as a concept is unfalsifiable: we cannot experience anything outside our own universe.  Stephen Hawking (who lived on after the course was published) demanded that we try to trace our universe back  from our" worm’s eye view” in a similar fashion to our evolution on earth - maybe it’s just how elemental symmetries happened to break down.  We note that while we can measure data back until very shortly after the big bang, anything earlier must be conjecture, albeit compatible with what we know and what fits with our best current scientific paradigm.  We have been amazed and overwhelmed by some of the concepts: all that matter and energy released from a tiny point by quantum variation; and time starting at the big bang - there is no “before”!