Question 20: Why does the world exist? Because a mouse is looking at it?

Gesine Grosche, PTB Working Group "Unit of Length": Why does the mouse exist? Does it exist in order that the world might be looked at and exist? And what if the cat comes?

Annette Paul, PTB Working Group "Environmental radioactivity": It is our task to find out. A challenge to mankind, rather than to mice. The recent assumption is: because the soup has bubbled.

Reinhard Scherm, former PTB-Department "Fundamentals of Physics and Metrology": Ah, the rigid anthropic principle as a teleological maxim. Very suspicious. We small human beings always walk into the same trap and take ourselves too seriously. If we did not exist, we couldn’t look at the world. Is this a reason for our existence? The question “why” is to be referred to the theologians. Without return.

Ernst O. Göbel, President of the PTB: I don’t understand!

Uwe Keyser, former PTB-Department "Focal Points of Experimental Research": You can see it that way, but it seems rather to be a philosophical question.