Big bang cosmology

This is not a scientific exam board where arrogant fools like you can make claims about an event science has not the slightest clue about its cause. Nothing , I repeat nothing in science can explain the BB and for you to be so confident in your dismissal without a clue to my knowledge of the bb or to even reason with my proposal puts you down as an arrogant fool.

I came back just to strike out the first sentence which said "Calm down guys" ... that was dumb. Strike it. No need to calm down. When people speak their minds there is always the hope and possibility of a bright response from someone who has taken offense to a rebuttal, justifiable or not ... the same is as written: It's right that science can't explain everything. Even the man who coined the term 'big bang' said himself that science only goes so far, and 'if you can't see it, it didn't happen,' so where does that leave us. If we believe only in science it leaves out philosophy. Philosophy doesn't limit itself to questions that only science is best at answering. Physics also only answers questions up to a point, but even here cosmology has gone a long way to describing how the elements were formed in relation to inflation theory, etc; but what then can philosophy do? One can't do better than follow the advice of Immanuel Kant, and here I suggest that anyone who doesn't think that speculative philosophers have a role to play with their theories, read Kant's critical philosophy ... but this would really put them to the test. Most people here simply don't have a clue as to what Kant was on about. But he did not hold, as commonly believed, that metaphysics was useless. He proposed an alternative means of achieving the highest aims of metaphysics, meaning resolving the most difficult questions ... and yes, this entails offering philosophical speculations as to the ultimate beginning of the universe. This is beyond physics, just as the term metaphysics implies. So why all this nonsense and put downs about what people know or don't know and physics professors who in many instances know squat about philosophy ... I've read John Gribbins, Stephen Hawking, and others, and none of them seem to even know there is such a thing as philosophy. Too bad there are visitors to this forum who visit it only to put down philosophy, and metaphysics, and those who show their respect for philosophy by talking about it and its possibilities. My suggestion to them is, if they have no use for philosophy, including philosophical speculation about the big bang, is to get lost and visit other forums where their presence might be better appreciated.

Einstein said his own theories were largely the result of a free flight of imagination. He did not sit down with a pencil and start using numbers to think. He imagined. And he tried to imagine a world that could not be experienced. What he imagined became the General Theory of Relativity. Sometimes when people take exception to a theory, whether scientific or otherwise, their innate response to to cast cynicism at the theory by stating that's it's just a highblown theory ... a work of the imagination ... that has nothing to say. This holds even more true for philosophy and those who have advanced systems of philosophy, and who still hold to the belief that the most difficult questions of all belong not to science, but to philosophy. I think that's what this thread is all about. In this regard, I take extremely strong exception to those who boast that physics and science are the greatest instruments we have towards understanding. No they are not. Philosophy holds out the only promise of possible answers to the most difficult questions and always has.

I suppose I have a moderate subscription to the Big Bang Theory, but it still essentially states that something came from nothing, it is merely a more scientific elaboration of God. However, I am more interested in the "Cyclic Universe" theory which indicates that the Big Band was a bridge to numerous past universes with endless cycles of evolution. Each new universe is then accompanied by new waves of matter, stars, planets and so forth. The universe sort of undergoes a series of habitual events much like own daily lives.

There is no evidence of anything prior to this universe, only assumption. For the Big Bang to occur, something would still have to be present for its causation. The process of conception is still a continuous cycle whether or not a fully operated universe was ever at all there.

If there is no evidence, assumptions have been made as sort of a temporary gap-filler. These are ephemeral "answers" which may not necessarily be scientific and they don't really answer anything. The assumption of 'magic' could also be used as a prejudice theory.

but yes it's all just word-play.

I wasn't implying that it is less possible, but can 'nothing' really formulate 'something' if it's absolutely nothing? Perhaps it can, but with the evidence we have I suppose anything is equally possible. I'm still waiting for the demonstration on this. The idea of the Big Bang being an illusion is still nonetheless another gap-filler like God has been, but yes it's all just word-play.

The center of a black hole for example, is not necessarily nothing if it has space, matter and time passing through it. But even if there is a region of the universe with zero matter fields, it still could not be considered nothing if it has measurable existence and properties.

I agree with you, Serena, that something from nothing is only possible when nothing is hiding a little something up its metaphorical sleeve. That to me seems tautological.

There is no evidence that the big bang came from nothing. There is every reason to believe that something existed prior to the universe simply because there must have been something from which the universe could have come. We just don't know what that something was, and if it was previous universes, then we must ask from where they came and fall into an infinite regression from which the only escape is that somewhere back along the generations of universes the must have arisen one universe from no other source than timeless being, the ground-state of existence.

Samm

i dont think the full picture of the bb singularity has been drawn, QM has an untold influence on the view of this occasion.


If we do presume this bb singularity was, if it could have been observed , invisible, so in reality as far as the space time continuum is concerned it did not exist. Does anyone disagree?