Physical necessity and anthropic principles in cosmology

Abstract

The article contains a discussion of the relations between physical necessity, the idea of law in natural sciences, and the possibility of proving a teleological structure of the universe. Against the tradition reaching back to D. Hume, the author defends the view that the essence of physical laws cannot be reduced only to the level of observable regularities. The existence of regularities in nature assumes existence of latent relations of necessity that form the order of nature. The interpretation of the laws of nature that stresses necessity makes it possible to pass over to the teleological way of looking at the way that the universe functions.