The anthropomorphic principle and its ascribing subsidiaries make up a rather strange, panglossian reflection to entertain. It is not only a form of personification, understanding the forces of nature as all-too human gods, which is neither wrong nor right nor poetic nor literal because one is engaging in a very Cartesian philosophical exercise in doing so (though I always thought it was a haughty-humble tautology to convivially rebuild the world in one's imagination and deem it perfect because one could not imagine it any other way), it also is projected, scalar, in both directions from the perspective of a nutshell or flies to wanton boys to the laws governing universe and the universe itself.
The Goldie Locks zone ideal for habitation is one expression of it, which itself questions why the natural laws of the universe be so perfectly and apparently improbably in tune to the development of human beings, or the question why has not intelligent life elsewhere
made itself known. A few reasons are given: the infinite distance between intelligences, that advancing life cannot meet the technological challenges that are proving be potential downfalls for us--environmental degradation, nuclear war, electro-smog, etc, or fear or the
Prime Directive. I am sure a combination of these factors are behind this lack of contact or ignorance thereof--or something completely different. Verging towards the other existential end, I think that nothing and everything has captured this way of thinking than the mechanical clock. One does not find these sorts of relics with no explanation but they are perfectly reflective of our paradox--that if the forces of the universe were different, a machine that grounds an abstract idea, like human sense for time, that works off of gravity and tension, would be meaningless or at least intriguing in its do-nothing complexity.
