2 Fine-Tuning as Design

Few metaphors distort physics more deeply than the trope of “fine-tuning.” We are told the constants of nature are “just right” for life — as if some cosmic engineer had turned dials on a control panel with exquisite precision. The metaphor carries teleology by stealth. Constants become knobs. The cosmos becomes a machine. Life becomes a pre-set target.

This framing collapses possibility into design. It converts contingency into intention. And it hides a basic logical flaw: we already exist, therefore the constants are consistent with our existence. To retroactively interpret this consistency as evidence of deliberate calibration is to mistake survival bias for design.

The metaphor of tuning presumes there were dials to be adjusted in the first place, as if constants exist independently of the symbolic frameworks through which we model them. But constants are not machine settings imposed from without. They are scaffolds within our theoretical architecture — stabilisations of relation that allow us to construe phenomena coherently. They function as pivots in our symbolic system, not as dials on a cosmic instrument.

Relationally, there is no fine-tuning problem. There is only the projection of design where there is none. The so-called “constants” are parameters in a symbolic system, not proof of a cosmic technician. Possibility is not calibrated intention. It is open, relational, and reflexively construed.