No. of Recommendations: 6
The Big Bang Theory posits an expanding universe. ... The analogy is usually given of a balloon expanding so that every point on its surface gets further and further away from every other point. That's fine but if the balloon was the universe itself, what is it expanding into? There is nothing outside of the universe.
I too have puzzled over this — the becoming of existence — and have arrived at a perspective that feels more satisfying, at least for me.
As you point out, the notion of an expanding universe suggests a 'big-banging' original (erstwhile naked) singularity.
That raises the question: What came before original singularity?
Positing a universe oscillating between big-bang and big-crunch does nothing but put off answering this question. Beyond that, it's scientifically unverifiable.
A lifetime of contemplation has left me with a conviction that everything is now. That may seem like metaphysical Taoism, but I’ve done my best to reconcile this perspective with physical understandings. That’s led to an experience of ubiquitous existence as atemporally emergent within erstwhile nothingness. The challenge has been to resolve the apparent discrepancy between perception of a vastly extended physical environment and experience of everything all at once.
Central to this integration is the widely accepted notion among physicists of a massless singularity of infinite potential abiding at the origin of all-that-is. So there's an unfathomable gulf between this state of no-specific-thingness and exponentially expanding spacetime hosting boundlessly entangling relations. Physicists explain this by positing exponentially propagating cosmic inflation consuming imperceptible time.
I see the infinite potential of original nothingness as the host of all experience. Quarks are the fundamental components of protons, neutrons, electrons and photons; comprising atoms, molecules, cells, and organisms of every complexity — the stuff of universal experience as well as the means of its (self)perception. The observation that quarks are describable only as probabilities suggests that the entirety of organically evolving universal observation is, at every moment, emergent within the infinite potential of original singularity.
Our conception of a persistent ‘reality’ is, in a sense, an illusion. What’s actually going on is boundless complexification within the infinite possibilities of erstwhile nothingness.
The 'material' universe is perceived as matter and energy, manifesting as an evolving array of 'forces.'
I've come to regard existence as boundlessly complexifying relations ubiquitously emergent within the infinite potential of erstwhile nothingness. So the hypothesis is that original singularity is a placeholder for the infinite potential of nothingness. Infinite potential necessarily eventuates as everything experienced, at scales ranging from quantum to cosmic.
At quantum scale, quarks, undetectable in themselves, serve as an interface between infinite potential and materialization. Ephemeral quarks (atemporally?) aggregate as the persisting protons and neutrons that comprise atomic nuclei.
As you likely already know, photons are massless particles that propagate sensory information about the universe of our common experience. Needless to say, they travel at the speed of light, and thus, according to Relativity, they incur no change in transit. So we’re informed of a uni-verse as it was at the moment of its photonic emissions. Thus do we project a universal history of about 13.7 billion light years in spatio-temporal depth.
One question is what exactly is universal expansion? The usual answer is spacetime itself — "the container for the contained" as a teacher put it to my high-school physics class, now 65 years ago.
But I prefer to regard original singularity as emergent experience of boundlessly entangling ubiquitously evolving complexification.
I've concluded that what we're dealing with is perception — (self)awareness of the whole shebang.
Perception by what? Awareness.
Perception of what? Experience.
Experience of what? Existence.
Awareness of what? Complexity.
Human experience —
modulating recognition, anticipation, expression —
ever memorializes organically evolving perception.
So that's how we get to where we are.
Perhaps all that sounds complicated.
But as I get it, it's nothing compared to the complexity
of Quantum Field Theory.
And it mostly doesn't conflict with contemporary science,
as cosmic inflation is widely acknowledged as an artifact.
I suspect the biggest distinction between my view and contemporary science
is the atemporality of becoming,
which science deals with by proposing an unobservable period of inflation.
My sense of it is that boundlessly evolving complexity is emergent *within* the original singularity hosting the infinite potential of nothingness.
That's as opposed to an inflationary big-banging singularity.
If we dispense with all that we're left with whatever's going on now.
What are your thoughts about all this?
Tom
