Those who ponder the big question Why is there anything rather than nothing? seem to be hopelessly locked in a conundrum. There are variations of two basic answers, but neither the basic answers nor their variations answer the question to everyone’s satisfaction. Basic answer #1: A conscious deity or power fashioned Everything; #2: an eternal natural process produced the universe (or multiverse). Right! You can see that many variations of both have run through both great minds and not-so-great minds, and I’m in the camp of the latter, of course.
The common thread in both answers is that in spite of what those who hold answer #2 tell us and argue with complex equations there is an element of faith because neither answer is ultimately demonstrable. That holders of either answer dismiss their opponents’ answers has been a matter of intellectual debate and sometimes physical conflict for thousands of years. We all know that.
Gödel has informed us that we can’t use any logical system, including a mathematical one, to establish its own truth. So, ultimately, everyone relies on some assumption or set of assumptions in trying to answer the “big question.” Maybe what we need is a merger of the two kinds of answers. So, here’s a proposal made not by this author, but rather by one of those “great minds”—if I read him correctly.
Augustine of Hippo was a follower of Zoroaster until he discovered Christianity. He then used Neoplatonism to elucidate the problem of the “big question.” Now, I’ll admit that in these few paragraphs I can’t elaborate much, but my goal isn’t a full explanation because I don’t believe any “true” explanation could find universal acceptance. Instead, I intend to provide yet another point of departure in your own journey of self-discovery.
Augustine basically says that the Creator created the possibility for forms to exist. He does not lay out the mechanism, only that an evolving universe was formed. And he requires no pre-existing stuff. After all, if it’s the “Beginning,” then it’s the beginning. Of course, in the sense of modern science, he can offer no proof short of reasoning and scripture, but then, he did live a long time before Galileo rolled a ball down a ramp.
Cosmologists and quantum physicists would probably say that Augustine had nothing more than faith and a philosophy that has since gone out of favor as the bases of his argument. That seems reasonable to us because, well, we’re us; we’re “modern,” and we think “modern.” Yet, we might ask ourselves a question about how we pursue the answer to the big question. Are we not in some ways just Hortons seeking the ultimate Whoville? Maybe Dr. Seuss should be up there in the category of “great minds.” His story of the elephant might be the story of modern physics in its search for the answer we all seek. We’re like Horton, recognizing by their “sounds,” and not by direct observation, atoms, their parts, and the parts of their parts. We’re down to quarks now, and strings might be next—though the power and temperature needed to find them is just about the same as that associated with the Big Bang. By comparison, we’re splashing around in tepid bath water. So, we argue about the nature of Whoville’s residents: Are they discreet particles or fields. We do seem to know now that we’re all splashing through the Higgs field, some with more and some with less resistance. But the field? Is it eternal? If even black holes and protons will evaporate, then just about everything is finite. Is the field? Finite stuff has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Beginning from what? Beginning how? Maybe our science isn’t as “scientific” as we think it is.
Like Horton, we’ve heard (and now, thanks to the COBE and WMAP images) and seen the Echo of the Big Bang, that is, the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation of about 2.75 Kelvins—more or less by a 100,000thspread over the early universe. We’ve been listening to the Echo of the ultimate Whoville, the sub-atomic sized initial universe that has unfolded into a Horton-sized cosmos with consciousness ever since Marconi heard static for the first time.*
We can pursue both kinds of answers in all their variations simultaneously. Such a pursuit won’t hurt. We can be both Augustinian and Higgsian. We can look for and argue for the existence of strings, but we’re all going to run up to the verbal conundrum we all face. If we call something a “beginning,” we imply “nothing” before.
What if our conundrum is merely the product of the way we handle understanding through language? Scientifically, we have heard, like Horton, the smallest Whoville we’ve postulated or surmised from running the universe’s expansion backward to the Big Bang. But what if our ears, like Horton’s, just aren’t sensitive enough to hear what we would need to hear to confirm an answer? What if we can’t, no matter how hard we try, even with the guidance of someone like Augustine and the most sophisticated machinery we can devise, hear the voice of God?
*Turn on your AM radio and you can hear the universe’s beginning as you dial between stations. You can hear Whoville in the static.
The common thread in both answers is that in spite of what those who hold answer #2 tell us and argue with complex equations there is an element of faith because neither answer is ultimately demonstrable. That holders of either answer dismiss their opponents’ answers has been a matter of intellectual debate and sometimes physical conflict for thousands of years. We all know that.
Gödel has informed us that we can’t use any logical system, including a mathematical one, to establish its own truth. So, ultimately, everyone relies on some assumption or set of assumptions in trying to answer the “big question.” Maybe what we need is a merger of the two kinds of answers. So, here’s a proposal made not by this author, but rather by one of those “great minds”—if I read him correctly.
Augustine of Hippo was a follower of Zoroaster until he discovered Christianity. He then used Neoplatonism to elucidate the problem of the “big question.” Now, I’ll admit that in these few paragraphs I can’t elaborate much, but my goal isn’t a full explanation because I don’t believe any “true” explanation could find universal acceptance. Instead, I intend to provide yet another point of departure in your own journey of self-discovery.
Augustine basically says that the Creator created the possibility for forms to exist. He does not lay out the mechanism, only that an evolving universe was formed. And he requires no pre-existing stuff. After all, if it’s the “Beginning,” then it’s the beginning. Of course, in the sense of modern science, he can offer no proof short of reasoning and scripture, but then, he did live a long time before Galileo rolled a ball down a ramp.
Cosmologists and quantum physicists would probably say that Augustine had nothing more than faith and a philosophy that has since gone out of favor as the bases of his argument. That seems reasonable to us because, well, we’re us; we’re “modern,” and we think “modern.” Yet, we might ask ourselves a question about how we pursue the answer to the big question. Are we not in some ways just Hortons seeking the ultimate Whoville? Maybe Dr. Seuss should be up there in the category of “great minds.” His story of the elephant might be the story of modern physics in its search for the answer we all seek. We’re like Horton, recognizing by their “sounds,” and not by direct observation, atoms, their parts, and the parts of their parts. We’re down to quarks now, and strings might be next—though the power and temperature needed to find them is just about the same as that associated with the Big Bang. By comparison, we’re splashing around in tepid bath water. So, we argue about the nature of Whoville’s residents: Are they discreet particles or fields. We do seem to know now that we’re all splashing through the Higgs field, some with more and some with less resistance. But the field? Is it eternal? If even black holes and protons will evaporate, then just about everything is finite. Is the field? Finite stuff has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Beginning from what? Beginning how? Maybe our science isn’t as “scientific” as we think it is.
Like Horton, we’ve heard (and now, thanks to the COBE and WMAP images) and seen the Echo of the Big Bang, that is, the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation of about 2.75 Kelvins—more or less by a 100,000thspread over the early universe. We’ve been listening to the Echo of the ultimate Whoville, the sub-atomic sized initial universe that has unfolded into a Horton-sized cosmos with consciousness ever since Marconi heard static for the first time.*
We can pursue both kinds of answers in all their variations simultaneously. Such a pursuit won’t hurt. We can be both Augustinian and Higgsian. We can look for and argue for the existence of strings, but we’re all going to run up to the verbal conundrum we all face. If we call something a “beginning,” we imply “nothing” before.
What if our conundrum is merely the product of the way we handle understanding through language? Scientifically, we have heard, like Horton, the smallest Whoville we’ve postulated or surmised from running the universe’s expansion backward to the Big Bang. But what if our ears, like Horton’s, just aren’t sensitive enough to hear what we would need to hear to confirm an answer? What if we can’t, no matter how hard we try, even with the guidance of someone like Augustine and the most sophisticated machinery we can devise, hear the voice of God?
*Turn on your AM radio and you can hear the universe’s beginning as you dial between stations. You can hear Whoville in the static.
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