The unreasonable effectiveness of physics in biology

We demonstrate that the system of fine-tuning constraints for life is overdetermined: the number of inequalities is too large relative to the number of free parameters in the chemical sector and likely not only there. This entails that life-permitting conditions are secured at the level of physics not only by the “fine-tuned” fundamental constants, but also by a very special form of the laws. In 1960, Eugene Wigner published his essay “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences”, summarizing his reflections on the miraculous comprehensibility of the mathematical structure of physical laws. The present paper points to another, no less remarkable, aspect of this structure—one that, following Wigner’s pattern, may be called the unreasonable effectiveness of physics in biology.