Beginning of the universe, you don't say...

First off I would like to say that I have read a number of posts that I liked from you hand, this is one of them. I will not go too deep into the matter because I am about to leave for Greece (holiday). You know how things can b when one is deeply entangled in a discussion and then has to step out...lets prevent that.

Second I'd like to note that you are definately not alone in thinking this. Immanuel Kant for instance has similar thoughts. You would enjoy his work I think.

Thirdly I'd like to point out that the difficulty with surmising an 'origin' of any kind is that origins cannot fit into the current scientific model. The model presupposes existance, which is why the conclusion must be drawn that something already exists and has always existed. If, for any reason, we would conclude that perhaps a creation would have taken place we must conclude, also according to the current scientific model, that it had been created by something els...which already existed. If we do not include the 'already existed' part the model will not allow for it. What we see happening is a long line of causality: cause and effect (which just so happens to be exactly what the scientific model does allow for). This chain of cause and effect knows no end unless we allow for something to simply exist. Such an infinite line of cause and effect is called a regressus ad infinitum.

There is, however, an elegant solution to step out of this cycle. Causality needs space and time to exist, for without space and time no seperations can exist and therefore no interaction can exist. So, for something to have simply 'always existed' it would have to exist outside the influences of space and time and therefore not exist in a causal way. Perhaps that means that it, in fact, is space and time because no seperations can exist there. It is of little consequence. This assertion boils down to the differences between potentiality and actuality.

Hope this helps.

To some extent I agree with you, Arjen.

I would add that we may simply be incapable of understanding what it means for the universe to have a beginning. Such lack of understanding does not preclude a beginning.

Personally, I don't believe the beginning constituted something coming from nothing in the way most people mean it. But, to explain what I mean, I'd have to go all religious on you. That doesn't fit this forum.

So, I'll go a different direction. Stephen Hawking has contemplated this question, and produced some very intriguing ideas. The idea of time as a fourth dimension gained respectability with Einstein. One aspect of our current universal view that came with that is Riemannian geometry. Simply put, you can think of our universe as a sphere (that's not exactly it, but it's a good analogy). So, our space has no beginning and no end, yet it is finite.

For quite awhile people have applied the same idea to time. Hawking took it one step further. He asked, what would happen if time became space. Or, put another way, maybe in the beginning, time did not exist, only space. And then a collapse of sorts occurred that transformed one dimension of space into time.

This is discussed somewhat in a book called The Fire in the Equations. Given that Hawking is the physicist who launched a thousand ships, people took his musings seriously - so much so that a group of physicists have now determined a mathematical possibility behind what Hawking is saying. You can find the paper (a real paper published in a respectable journal) at Slashdot | Time Dimension To Become Space-like.

Edit: I forgot to add that the discussion doesn't end there. The counter-question to Hawkings' proposal is this: OK, so time is circular, with no beginning and no end, yet finite. But, even if a circle has no beginning and no end, something had to draw the circle.

I think Resha makes some great points.

Being someone who accepts that we humans are the result of evolutionary processes, I feel that our brain is a tool that evolved to help us understand the world as it more or less directly appears to us. Our brain can fairly easily comprehend causality as it is appropriate for humans to be able to understand and manipulate our DIRECT environment, and process time frames that are relevant to our lifetimes. But there may be different kinds of "causalty" (or acausalty) that "exist" that our minds are not capable of grasping. (b/c they weren't necessary for us to survive in our world, to evolve in it) Our minds are good at understanding short time frames, say 100 years or less, because that was all that was necessary for us to survive/evolve in our world. But we lack the ablitity to intuitively grasp the specifics of time scales on the order of billions of years, and due to the apparent age of the universe, that's what we'll have to be able to do in order to understand the big bang and it's causes, or lack of cause if that is indeed the case.

We seem to be making progress, somewhat difficult and slow progress through hard work by many great minds, but progress nonetheless, in revealing an understanding of what transpired in the universe long ago, in what we currently understand as "the beginning".

BrightNoon, I'm sorry if I haven't answered your specific question to your satisfaction, but as I'm sure you're aware, it's a tough one, and one that science and philosophy has trouble answering head-on. I know you've said that you don't know much of physics (same here really) and don't particularly desire to, and also that even "non-technical" explanations of the relevant phenomena inspire little more than a chuckle in you, but I'd like to recommend you a book, if I may. It's by a prolific science writer who is a physicist named Paul Davies called The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World. It deals with relevant information in BOTH scientific and philosophical fields and you may enjoy it, and get a lot out of it. Sure, you may be blinded by some of the science, but he tries to be as non-techincal as possible, and I think there's a lot someone like you and I can get out of the book, even if we don't fully understand all the scientific concepts contained with in it. Or even most of them. Or even half of them. Or even more than one of them. Seriously though. Good stuff IMO.

What if causality does not exist in reality, but only in our minds? For it seems as though my mind can only grasp causality. And if that is so, then what I percieve may be not at all what exists in reality.

A position of such epistemological skepticism would then indicate that we have no reliable means for grasping reality external to our own consciousness, as you are saying. Our anthropocentric quest for "knowledge" and "truth" then becomes little more than methods we apply to ends that seem useful to us humans, but have no necessary bearing on external reality. We would basically be pursuing knowledge because it gives us ways to feel good, feel safe, and occupy ourselves.

That's what I think, anyway. But yeah, maybe we can't be sure of anything, other than the fact that we appear to have what we refer to as a "consciousness".

Allow me to rephrase. I think it is impossibe to know THE thing-in-itself cognitively. I say this because cognition needs definitions and definitions are boundaries; seperations. Do you know what rationalism is? As opposed to empiricism

Yes, Arjen, I know. That's not what I think though. I could go into a long, detailed discussion of why too, but it would be off-topic.

... sounds like a reasonable characterization to me, and doesn't necessarily conflict with the big bang theory ... the big bang theory simply applies the theory of general relativity in an attempt to reconstruct the developmental history of the universe as we know it ... this history can be followed back to what general relativity reconstructs as "the singularity", but general relativity has nothing to say about what existed prior to that ... the universe as we know it has gone through a number of phase changes since the singularity - so who's to say that the singularity wasn't just another phase change, albeit one of such radical change that prior to the singularity the theory of general relativity simply did not apply (thus accounting for its blindness in that respect)? ... and you can follow the implications of that thought just about anywhere - for example, if our concepts of space and time do not apply beyond the bits of the history of the universe that we know, then who's to say that the history of the universe isn't infinitely cyclical?

For Centuries scientists and philosophers believed that the Universe had always existed and will always continue to exist. It had no begining and no end. This was scientific fact. Gallileo and Copernicus were the first scientists to propose this fact (Physics pretty much began with them) but early Greek Philosophers also played around with the idea.

Only in the last 50 years has Science began to go back on its theory because of the discovery of Cosmic microwave background radiation. The blackbody curve that it produced is what convinced most scientists. The fact is that all higher elements must have had some type of extreme energy conditions much greater than a supernova in order to exist. Simple lead can only have synthesized under extreme energy conditions.

The Mathematics is solid, in fact, two seperate calculations were performed in order to determine the age of the Universe. One was done based on the rate of expansion of the Universe, and the second was done based on the deterioration of the background radiation. Both calculations produced more or less the same age.

Remember that Galileo invented the scientific method. Prior to this Aristotle was taught as truth. Aristotle philosophised much like you are doing. Galileo came and proved him wrong based on experimentation.

Science has now come full circle, and in the last fifty years has proven the first word of the Torah to be true. "Bereshet" (Translated as "In the begining")

According to the early Kabalists the Universe began as the size of an Almond and then expanded in a burst. This is why time was created at this "beginning". Time only exists because of space. Time is the distance between objects. The time of the Sun and the time of the Earth is 8 minutes appart. Time is categorized by change and movement, specifically the movement of light. If the universe exists in a point, then time cannot exist because light cannot travel. This is one of Einstein's revelations that he proved through mathematics, but was previously stated by the early Kabbalists.

The place where Physics and Metaphysics meet is a place of truth.

why would u care about rocks and stuff being created when babies are being created everyday. and u actually believe that a baby is created by another a mother and a father that existed before them thats like the chicken and the egg why was someone born before another, is there an after life if we are born at the same time there most definatelky is an afterlife we can share but if we a re born before or after another there is no after life to share, one life to share hence trees die, old people die there is no such thing as infinity plus one or minus one.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/images/754636.jpg

Just a little interesting theory.