What -is- this?

[Worm of Despite]

Okay, so I was thinking in my usual cause-effect logic about the Big Bang, and the natural assumption is what caused the Big Bang? It made me sit back and just think, "what the f*ck is all this? What is this reality? What causes it, even before the Big Bang? Can we even know? What -is- this?"

Was there an empty, eternal void before the Bang; is occurring from nothing truly an affront to natural laws of science? Quantum physics says things can just happen. On the subatomic level, things happen for no reason, spontaneously, such as the decay of a radioactive nucleus: why did given nucleus decay at that moment and not another? There is no answer.

So is it without bounds to say the Big Bang just happened? At its size it was smaller than an atom (or around), just before its explosion, so it could've fallen within the chaos of quantum physics. Snap, crackle, pop, presto, expanding universe for billions of years. Secondly: maybe there wasn't eternity before the Big Bang or even a void, because time and space is intrinsically linked to the known universe and its physics.

Anyway, some of my waffling. In all, I think maybe it all just "did happen", because this is such a powerful, deep field of space we live in such sweet, short-lived awareness, with a world that, were it merciful, would let a boy's dog never die or children never suffer. Something in what's here, now, about unfairness and suffering tells me that maybe it all just "happened" and it's indifferent. If there is any divinity or immortality, it's in cracking the aging code and giving man the longevity that is endemic in carbon.

[Fist and Faith]

is occurring from nothing truly an affront to natural laws of science?

No, it can't be. Whether it's the universe, the universe's cause, the cause's cause, the cause's cause's cause, ... cause, something was uncaused.

Anyway, some of my waffling. In all, I think maybe it all just "did happen", because this is such a powerful, deep field of space we live in such sweet, short-lived awareness, with a world that, were it merciful, would let a boy's dog never die or children never suffer. Something in what's here, now, about unfairness and suffering tells me that maybe it all just "happened" and it's indifferent.

I certainly don't enjoy the suffering. But I don't see an alternative that's as good as what we have. I would consider it a waste of existence to just get everything we want every moment. Struggling and overcoming is what defines us. To lose that would make us something out of various si-fi movies where we're all kept happy by some alien race, or whatever. Empty smiles on our faces.

[wayfriend]

I can say that the whole big bang theory makes a lot more sense to me when I presume that there was another universe on the other side that collapsed into a singularity. Or maybe the same one. And the whys are a lot easier to deal with that way, too.

Which I said in reply to one of the other times you asked this question.

Will we ever know what the hell happened?

[Kinslaughterer]

In one of those deep philosophical veins...What is "cause"? As humans we get very caught up in oppositional forces, our language, and our cultural perceptions. We really have a hard time with the idea of non-existance, beginnings, and causation. It is our neurotic compulsion to exert control or preceive control. That's why we refer to nature as having "laws" and why the Big Bang seems basically counter-intuitive to some of our basic observations of the universe.
Personally, the Big Bounce has slightly more weight with me. Not really a beginning or end but a constant state of being with some radical universal horizions mixed in. I suspect we are the the only species at the very least on this planet that thinks we matter.

[Avatar]

Well, with M-Theories current...what...11? additional universes, that makes as much sense as anything and more than most.

Of course, Fist is probably right...those universe had to come into being, and so did the collapsing ones that caused that, (or whatever it was), and so on. Is the inevitability of a first cause the fatal flaw of a cause and effect universe?

--A

[Kinslaughterer]

Why must there be a beginning and a cause? What evidence is there for a previous void? You know there is a lot of ins, lot of outs, a lot of what-have-yous...

[Avatar]

It can't be elephants all the way to the bottom though can it?

If everything has a cause, (and quantumly it appears that it might not), then we're back to time (the sequential progression of events) being meaningless...doesn't "always" have to start somewhere?

--A

[Kinslaughterer]

Why?
Time isn't as relevant quantumly as it is biologically. Our relation to time as opposed to the subatomic is a mental wrestling match that we refuse to submit too. Our basic dislike of not a beginning moves it to the inconceivable.

[Avatar]

Time isn't as relevant quantumly as it is biologically.

Ok, that makes perfect sense to me, especially since I've always been somewhat suspicious of the so-called objective nature of time.

But yes...the thought of a not-beginning does strike me as faintly disturbing.

--A

[wayfriend]

This argument always reminds me of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem and undecidable propositions. Because that I believe that some certain things are so fundamental to the way we are put together that we literally cannot examine them in a meaningful way. There will always be, and cannot not be, things we are incapable of understanding. We would have to be something we are not in order to even look at them.

Which leads to rather defeatest positions, admittedly, on our ability to truly understand time and the beginning of the universe.

But Godel did have a point. Any system has limits to what it can do. And out mind is a system.

[Orlion]

It's interesting to note that no matter how you look at it, something had to exist eternally (no beginning). If you're like me, you believe that matter has always existed in some form, that it was never created and is never destroyed. As a result, all the substance of the universe has always existed, it never had a beginning.

Now, if you believe in a Creator, the question is then asked, "what created the Creator?" Then what created that? We get to the point that either the Creator existed eternally or that there are an infinite numbers of "first causes". In any case, we are looking at the concept of infinity, there is no way around it.

Also, Avatar, it's 11 dimensions in M-theory, with the 11 dimension (if I understand correctly) being a very thin string that contains many universes, including our own. And when at least a couple of these 11 dimension strings rub against each other, you get the formation of new universes... this is one of the reasons why I don't much care for pure theoretical science...

[High Lord Tolkien]

What evidence is there for a previous void?

I don't know, my head starts to hurt after a while thinking about this.


But if the universe is expanding what is it expanding into, (a void makes the most primitive sense) a retreating universe, or an infinite number of retreating universes......?
If so what is the "barrier" that separates a retreating-verse from an expanding-verse?

I'm always amazed that they can figure out the expansion time rate anyway.
And then backtrack it to the Big Bang.
That seems so damn arrogant to me.
Every new technological advance in astronomy makes the universe larger and larger.
I have to dig out my recent Scientific American that dealt with the universe's origin and timeline.
It was fascinating.

[Avatar]

But Godel did have a point. Any system has limits to what it can do. And our mind is a system.

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours.

And yes Orlion, you're absolutely right. 11 dimensions in which multiple universes are contained.

--A

[Kinslaughterer]

HLT,

That's the other real human preception problem we have...we can only think in terms of space of existance like a container. We, as humans, love defining lines and boundaries. It seems time, space, and existance don't play by our rules. At least that is what sort of makes sense to me, you know?

[Zarathustra]

Fascinating thread. Great opening post, LF. This question always leaves me feeling awestruck and quasi-spiritual. Why is there something rather than nothing? The fact that the universe exists at all seems to say something very startling about existence, as if on some level there *has* to be a reality, that existence is inevitible. There is an Existence, over and above our universe. The condition of existing is something our universe fulfilled, but that condition must have been possible in the first place.

Orlion makes a similar point when he says, "no matter how you look at it, something had to exist eternally." I think this is true, even if it is nothing more than the "realm" of possibility before the universe became actual. It seems intuitively obvious to me that for something to happen, it must have been possible in the first place. Actual occurrences "map out" a larger range of all the possible occurrences that may happen. The universe coming into being had to be a fundamental possibility of existence itself, regardless of what existence is like "outside" the universe (if that even makes sense, if there are such places). "The possible" isn't merely a theoretical range of potential occurrences. It is the state of existence having these conditions. For instance, matter arranging into atoms makes explicit a fundamental condition of the universe; namely, all the possible ways matter can coelesce into particles. These possibilities are "written" into the fabric of the universe in virtue of it being the kind of place where these specfic kinds of occurrences can happen.

So I think the fact that the universe exists means that there had to be a "realm of the possible" in which something like the universe occurring was already one possibility among (maybe) an infinite set of possibilties.

Lord Foul, what you suggest is indeed something that cosmologists have considered, the idea that the universe is self-caused in the same way that spontaneous quantum events (like the appearance of particles out of the void) are self-caused. The entire universe was small enough at one point for quantum properties to exert their effects over the whole. I read about this idea in physicist Paul Davies's book, The Mind of God. It's a great read for anyone interested in this issue.

I think Avatar makes a good point about limitations. The point of Godel's insight wasn't that every system has its limits--only axiomatic systems. The fact that humans can even come up with something like Godel's Theorem means that we transcend these axiomatic systems with our consciousness (also that consciousness isn't an axiomatic system). After all, he *proved* that there will always be true statements within a formal system (like logic and math) which can't be proven within that system. We can know things about a system which the system itself doesn't even capture.

I've never viewed his proof as limit of consciousness, but a limit of formal systems. In this sense, I think it shows the opposite of our limits. The realization, the understanding which comes from this proof, is transcendental, imo.

With that said, Wayfriend's statement isn't necessarly false: "We would have to be something we are not in order to even look at them." This might very well be true, though I don't believe Godel's Theorem proves it. I tend to think spacetime itself is an "illusion" of perspective only, one brought about by the kind of beings we are. So in this sense, our being does present limits. But who is to say we can't become something else? Something we are currently not?

[Fist and Faith]

What evidence is there for a previous void?

What evidence is there for previous existence?

Heh.

Seriously, I'm not arguing the point.

Your points about our limited understanding of things are all true enough. But humanity is doing the best it can with what we have to work with, eh? We ask the kinds of questions we can conceive of asking, and we look for answers in every way we can conceive of.

Was there anything before the BB? I've heard that if there was, the BB erased all possible evidence. So what can we do? Can we assume an answer, and see where that leads us? If we assume there was, let's try to figure out what it could, or could not have been. If we assume there was not, let's try to figure out how everything came to be.

If we assume time stretches back infinitely far into the past, and something always existed, then we're done looking for the answer. (At least that answer. Of course, we can still ask many other questions. An infinite number of them, I suppose.)


And, as always, thanks for the quote, Av.

[Kinslaughterer]

The search is certainly not over. I'm working on the basic assumption of beginning. Since our rather nascent understanding of quantum mechanics is asking larger questions is it proper to start with, ah, where did it start? That may be the Oath of Peace for astronomers. We, as scientists, have to keep the frame of reference as large and open as possible.
Hey, just go where the universe ain't, right?

[wayfriend]

We can know things about a system which the system itself doesn't even capture.

Yes. When the system under discussion is not We. When its something we can hold at arms length because it's outside of us. When the system under discussion is the existence which we live in, and which we are a part of... I don't think the answer is so clear.

I think we can imagine what is beyond the edge of the universe. But I don't think we can really find out. By definition, we can't go there, and nothing can come from there to us. Only something which transcends existence in the universe, something trans-universal, could even begin to answer that question. We aren't trans-universal. There may be nothing which is.

I do make assumptions when I say this is like the Incompleteness Theorem. In that I suppose that things a system cannot know are the very things that "implement" the system's rules. A system can know the rules, but it cannot know what makes those rules work, what enforces those rules. It just feels intuitively correct. Nothing in a system can stand outside of its system to see how a system works.

[Fist and Faith]

Hey, just go where the universe ain't, right?

Cool! I'll drive!

But seriously, how can such a thing be? I'm not arguing, I'm asking. How do we go about it? It sounds very difficult. We must first define the universe in its entirety. Then, we can try to figure out how to get out of those confines. (Heh. The universe is too confining!) But we can't send a probe that functions with our universe's properties to where our universe's properties don't exist, can we? How can a probe go, for example, where there is no matter/energy/space/time?

Of course, I'm not say a probe is the only way we can "go where the universe isn't." What else can we try?

[Orlion]

But wouldn't sending a probe into a place where there is no matter/energy/space/time bring all those things into being into that place? My God.... our universe was created by a probe....