This perennial "what if" assumes that, in contemporary physics terms, there is "time" independent of "before" spacetime, which seems as conceptually incoherent as "north of the North Pole" (i.e. edge of a sphere, torus, loop, etc). And if we do away with "spacetime", for the sake of discussion, we then lose more than a century of physical and cosmological grounds to even discuss "the expanding universe" and its retrodicted BB. What does an event mean "before" spacetime? is the implication of that old "what if".
The big bang is conceived as being the beginning of space and time, with those two not being distinguishable at first. "Before the beginning of time" is not a phrase that can be given a meaning within the cosmology of big bang theory. There was never a 'before the big bang'. Of course folks come up with new theories and cosmologies on a regular basis, big bounce, etc, but such speculations need to be closely mathematically argued reformulations of the standard model beyond the scope of this forum.
Plus, the answer to the 'what if... question can easily be given, that exactly the world we see must follow from whatever came before.
This perennial "what if" assumes that, in contemporary physics terms, there is "time" independent of "before" spacetime, which seems as conceptually incoherent as "north of the North Pole" (i.e. edge of a sphere, torus, loop, etc). And if we do away with "spacetime", for the sake of discussion, we then lose more than a century of physical and cosmological grounds to even discuss "the expanding universe" and its retrodicted BB. What does an event mean "before" spacetime? is the implication of that old "what if".
Why couldn't there be more than one instance of space time? If it starts with a big bang then ends with something else then why couldn't each such space/time bubble be its own thing? Time space could have its own instances of time space within it, like the way time flows differently with different gravitational forces.
Our universe today is derived from this event. What if there were other universes before that?
Or parallel universes to this one, sure. I dont see why not but what if??
Ya suppose if there were other universes before this one we would need to adjust our models? They would be incorrect? What are you getting at?
Or parallel universes to this one, sure. I dont see why not but what if??
Ya suppose if there were other universes before this one we would need to adjust our models? They would be incorrect? What are you getting at?
Big bang only shows how to derive our current universe from that situation. Says nothing about what happened before.
Big bang only shows how to derive our current universe from that situation. Says nothing about what happened before.
I agree with you, Im just not sure what answer you are looking for with what if we would have to adjust our models in physics I would think, lest we lose out on some potential insight the before universe might provide for our current one.
I mention parallel universes as another possibility about where big bangs fit in the universe. There could be big bangs happening within big bangs.
Reply to DingoJones Logical possibilities abound. However, I think it only make sense in philosophy to talk about what has already been established in physics and not to extrapolate non-evidentiary, or inexplicable, counterfactuals that philosophy is ill-equipped to establish. My point is: given the physics we philosophers have to work with, time before independent of spacetime doesn't make any sense; besides, a speculative fiat of "other spacetimes" is unparsimonious as well.
Multiple universes seems to push the question back, much like God. Who or what created God? What created the universe or the multiverse? Etc.
Human beings arent omnipotent. This could be a question we just cant answer, and perhaps demonstrates our cognitive limits.
Personally I think since the question is a scientific one, and thus assumes a concept of nature (the universe), we should inquire about what we mean by universe, nature, causality and time.
If the explanation lies outside our capacities, or outside of naturalism, then we need to accept it or broaden our fundamental concepts of existence.
Reply to Xtrix :up: The other point is that, even if there are other big bangs, universes and thus instances of spacetime, how could we know about them, and even if we could know about them, if time relations as we understand them are coherent only within our own spacetime, how could any putative big bangs, universes and instances of spacetime be counted as being "before" or "after" anything in our spacetime bubble?
I think it only make sense in philosophy to talk about what has already been established in physics and not to extrapolate non-evidentiary, or inexplicable, counterfactuals that philosophy is ill-equipped to establish. My point is: given the physics we philosophers have to work with, time before independent of spacetime doesn't make any sense; besides, a speculative fiat of "other spacetimes" is unparsimonious as well.
This was Quines position, that pragmatisms relativism must ground itself in the realism of physics, a notion referred to as scientism by Putnam.
Physics IS philosophy. That is , it is an applied language of philosophical thought. The problem is that the forms of metaphysics that todays physics depends on may be already out of date when it comes to effectively addressing questions concerning the nature of time, space and genesis. We philosophers dont have to limit ourselves to the theories the physicist has to work with. We have at our disposal, if we are willing to make use of them, a host of more powerful conceptual tools to deal with these issues beyond a physical account of spacetime.
Multiple universes seems to push the question back, much like God. Who or what created God? What created the universe or the multiverse? Etc.
Human beings arent omnipotent. This could be a question we just cant answer, and perhaps demonstrates our cognitive limits.
Or perhaps the way we are forced to formulate these questions when we stick to the confines of physics scheme of thinking keeps us from noticing an entirely different, and I would argue more productive, way of approaching origins, time and space that is already available to us in philosophy.
This was Quines position, that pragmatisms relativism must ground itself in the realism of physics, a notion referred to as scientism by Putnam.
My position is not [philosophy] "must ground itself in the realism of physics". You're interpretation of what I've on this thread, if this is your interpretation, is mistaken. Btw, I prefer Sellars to Quine.
Physics IS philosophy.
However, philosophy IS NOT physics (i.e. not theoretical, or does not explain any aspect of nature).
[ ... ] how could any putative big bangs, universes and instances of spacetime be counted as being "before" or "after" anything in our spacetime bubble?
Yes indeed. Its the fundamental branch of natural philosophy. (Perhaps astronomy is older but physics is still central.)
I think this too often gets forgotten. People want to make sharp distinctions, as if the sciences have no need for philosophy and long ago detached from it. I think hidden in that view is dogmatism namely, scientism which arises out of a justifiable disdain for organized religion and one I used to share.
But we throw the baby out with the bathwater if we make these rigid compartmentalizations. Better to break free of it. Life is messy.
Physics IS philosophy.
However, philosophy IS NOT physics (i.e. not theoretical, or does not explain any aspect of nature).
If the job of explanation is to reveal interconnections, correlations and coherences among what had formerly been taken to be disparate phenomena, then both physics and philosophy explain. I think its a matter of how conventional and generic the explanation is. If empiricism takes as its role the explanation of what can be objectively measured , this is because it takes as its starting point the already conventionalized idea of the object. A philosophical explanation can burrow
deep within the unexamined pre suppositions forming the condition of possibility for the conventionalized notion of the physical object. Physicists explain objective nature, while philosophy explains the nature of the construction of the idealization physicists call objective nature.
But we throw the baby out with the bathwater if we make these rigid compartmentalizations. Better to break free of it. Life is messy
Yes, I dont think there is any categorical way to distinguish the philosophical, the scientific-empirical , the technological, and the literary or artistic for that matter. They interpenetrate each other in complex
ways.
Reply to Joshs I'm with Witty: philosophy describes discursive features and usages while leaving "everything as it is". On the hand, physics endeavors to explainhow transformations of states-of-affairs into other states-of-affairs are possible with high-precision models that are experimentally testable. Philosophical elucidations are used in constructing physical models the way grammars are used in novels and histories; they do not explain anything but rather make explicit, or describe, as you say "interconnections, correlations and coherences" implicit in concepts or discourses such as physics. To the degree physicists find 'philosophical contributions' add to the efficacy of their theoretical and research practices, they deliberately use philosophy; otherwise it speculation for speculation's sake is mostly (again, efficaciously) ignored.
The OP's question points to the plain and simple fact that our intution about time is such that it involves [math]-\infty[/math] (beginninglessness) and yet we don't possess a term for this idea. No, infinity ([math]\infty[/math]) isn't it because it's endlessness and not beginninglessness. So [math]-\infty[/math] is only, how shall I put it?, an approximation of the concept we need to make sense of the OP's question.
I think it is eternity - without beginning and without end.
[quote=Moore, A. W. 1990.The Infinite.] Wittgenstein in a lecture once asked his audience to imagine coming across a man who is saying, 5, 1, 4, 1, 3finished!, and, when asked what he has been doing, replies that he has just finished reciting the complete decimal expansion of pi backwardssomething that he has been doing at a steady rate for all of past eternity.
I think it is eternity - without beginning and without end.
Wittgenstein in a lecture once asked his audience to imagine coming across a man who is saying, 5, 1, 4, 1, 3finished!, and, when asked what he has been doing, replies that he has just finished reciting the complete decimal expansion of pi backwardssomething that he has been doing at a steady rate for all of past eternity.
Moore, A. W. 1990.The Infinite.
:lol:
[quote=Ms. Marple]Most interesting![/quote]
Eternity = Both beginningless + Endless.
What about just beginninglessness?
As for Wittgenstein's quaint gedanken experiment, in what context did it appear? What was the point he was trying to make?
Reply to Agent Smith Unbounded. For instance, the Hartle-Hawking No Boundary conjecture (that there wasn't a "big bang" just as there isn't an edge to the Earth (i.e. sphere / torus)).
Maybe that "eternity" is the dimensionless point (nunc stans).
[quote=Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus]If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.[/quote]
As for Wittgenstein's quaint gedanken experiment, in what context did it appear? What was the point he was trying to make?
It was reported by A W Moore from a lecture by W and I don't know more than that.
Like a lot of Wittgenstein's remarks it is suggestive of an argument without being explicit. Personally I think that it is about the question you raise: does it make sense to talk about a process that has an end point in time (the time 'now') whilst having no beginning (there is no 'first term' of pi written backwards).? The comparison could be this:
I announce that I am going to recite the whole of pi. I begin "3.141....." I have begun an impossible task. I will never complete it. But it's a coherent story. We know when I started and we know I will never finish.
On the other hand, if I announce that I have just finished reciting pi backwards then my claim is worse that weirdly ambitious. It is logically incoherent. If I have been reciting pi backwards then I must never have begun at any particular time - and so I can never be finishing the recitation at any particular time.
I think the example is relevant to Kant's first antinomy:
[quote=Stanford]The first antinomy concerns the finitude or infinitude of the spatio-temporal world. The thesis argument seeks to show that the world in space and time is finite, i.e., has a beginning in time and a limit in space. The antithesis counters that it is infinite with regard to both space and time.
Perhaps the reason we don't have a term for 'without a beginning, but with an end' is that it is incoherent. If a process had no beginning then it would be already infinite. But if it's going on now then it might come to end at any moment - and it is therefore finite. So it would be both finite and infinite. That's the antinomy.
All I can say is that you're on the mark - it's a Morton's fork.
Both time has a beginning and no it doesn't are incoherent, but the former is [s]more coherent[/s] less incoherent than the latter. Scylla & Charybdis, choose the lesser of two evils.
The type of questions the OP is an example of pits our faculty of imagination against logic. Just because we can't conceive of time with/without a beginning we have no right to dismiss a sound argument that demonstrates which of the two cases obtains, oui?
Perhaps the reason we don't have a term for 'without a beginning, but with an end' is that it is incoherent. If a process had no beginning then it would be already infinite. But if it's going on now then it might come to end at any moment - and it is therefore finite. So it would be both finite and infinite. That's the antinomy.
No, just that the universe need not have a beginning or end.
Yes, I dont think there is any categorical way to distinguish the philosophical, the scientific-empirical , the technological, and the literary or artistic for that matter. They interpenetrate each other in complex
ways.
I think the example is relevant to Kant's first antinomy:
The first antinomy concerns the finitude or infinitude of the spatio-temporal world. The thesis argument seeks to show that the world in space and time is finite, i.e., has a beginning in time and a limit in space. The antithesis counters that it is infinite with regard to both space and time.
Stanford
Then, "infinite" and "finite" need to be defined. Because "infinite" could express the existence of an infinite time, which is what I would reject.
?Joshs I'm with Witty: philosophy describes discursive features and usages while leaving "everything as it is". On the hand, physics endeavors to explain how transformations of states-of-affairs into other states-of-affairs are possible with high-precision models that are experimentally testable. Philosophical elucidations are used in constructing physical models the way grammars are used in novels and histories; they do not explain anything but rather make explicit, or describe, as you say "interconnections, correlations and coherences" implicit in concepts or discourses such as physics. To the degree physicists find 'philosophical contributions' add to the efficacy of their theoretical and research practices, they deliberately use philosophy; otherwise it speculation for speculation's sake is mostly (again, efficaciously) ignored.
You make it sound like philosophy constructs grammars and clarifications after the fact , by looking at the explanations of physicists and then making explicit what the physicists have already created. But the leading edge of philosophy always beats physics to the punch. It is physics that fills in the details years after a philosophical approach produces a new architecture of thought, and then has to reconfigure anew all those details when philosophy ( or a philosophically attuned physicist) subverts the old architecture.
Each era of philosophy, from Descartes to Leibnitz to Kant to Hegel to Wittgenstein, anticipates an era of physics. Newtonian physics is compatible with Descartes but not with Kant, Hegel or Wittgenstein. A 19th physicist who had read and understood Kant would likely recognize inadequacies in Newtonian physics that would be invisible to Newton. Similarly, a 21st century physicist who understands Hegelian and post-Hegelian concepts will find it necessary to reconfigure the axes around which central ideas in physics revolve. Lee Smolen is an example of such a physicist today. He writes:
Philosophers of the past sometimes understood the problems we face more deeply than many of my colleagues today. For example, Leibniz was, to my understanding, the first to struggle with the main question that we face in trying to make a quantum theory of gravity-how to make a background independent description of a closed universe that contains both all its causes and all its observers. And Peirce was the first to articulate and try to solve the puzzle at the heart of the current debates in cosmology and string theory: what chose the laws that govern our universe? And what chose the initial conditions?
in many cases philosophers are working on the same questions I work on-and developing ideas related to the ideas I hope to establish-but from a bracingly different perspective.
fundamental physics has been in a crisis, due to the evident need for new revolutionary ideas-which becomes more evident with each failure of experiment to confirm fashionable theories, and the inability of those trained in a pragmatic, anti- philosophical style of research to free themselves from fashion and invent those new ideas. To aspire to be a revolutionary in physics, I would claim, it is helpful to make contact with the tradition of past revolutionaries. But the lessons of that tradition are maintained not in the communities of fashionable science, with their narrow education and outlook, but in the philosophical community and tradition.
The fact is physics does not make significant progress without regularly going through revolutions in its basic assumptions. When speculation for speculations s sake is ignored by physicists there isnrelative stagnation in the field.
Leibniz was, to my understanding, the first to struggle with the main question that we face in trying to make a quantum theory of gravity-how to make a background independent description of a closed universe that contains both all its causes and all its observers.
I believe Leibniz was the first to conceive the universe as a computing machine.
Reply to Jackson Like a neighborhood bar, it's a joint full of those who know what they don't know and suckers who don't know that they don't know. I find it's the suckers who tend to whinge and whine the most. This forum must suit your masochist tendencies though, 'cause you're still
here ... :razz:
Like a neighborhood bar, it's a joint full of those who know what they don't know and suckers who don't know that they don't know. I find it's the suckers who tend to whinge and whine the most. This forum must suit your masochist tendencies though, 'cause you're still here ... :razz:
The conformal cyclic cosmology ( CCC) is a cosmological model in the framework of general relativity, advanced by the theoretical physicist Roger Penrose.
Basically, it posits a cyclical universe. Our big bang was caused by the deathroes of a previous manifestation of a Universe. The interesting part is that Penrose and his team recently published his evidence that it really happened. He has called his evidence 'Hawking points,' and suggests his team has currently found 6 of them in our Universe and that their existence is direct proof of a previous Universe. He also claims that the current cosmological community has not adequately addressed his evidence yet. I think that means they must still be considering it. Exciting stuff imo!
Well, we certainly seem to be moving at the largest scale from low to high entropy so It seems plausible that when all matter turns back to energy, then, as Penrose suggests, 'scale' becomes meaningless and we will eventually have the conditions required for a singularity inflation/expansion/big bang happening again. Another cycle. The universe would be eternal in that sense.
I await the 'adequate response' Penrose is calling for from the cosmological community!
Well, we certainly seem to be moving at the largest scale from low to high entropy so It seems plausible that when all matter turns back to energy, that as Penrose suggests, 'scale' becomes meaningless and we will eventually have the conditions required for a singularity inflation/expansion/big bang happening again. Another cycle. The universe would be eternal in that sense.
I await the 'adequate response' Penrose is calling for from the cosmological community!
Your representation of Penrose makes sense to me. There is nothing about the BigBang that logically prevents multiple big bangs.
Your representation of Penrose makes sense to me. There is nothing about the BigBang that logically prevents multiple big bangs.
I wish I had the physics/maths expertise required to understand the details in his papers.
I have listened to some of those who don't fully support CCC such as Sean Carroll, who I know is more attracted to the many-worlds interpretation but Penrose has stated in Youtube interviews that the evidence that these Hawking points came from a previous universe is very strong.
You can download a PDF of the paper he and his team published regarding the evidence here:
I downloaded the pdf and tried to research each word I did not understand but I haven't gotten very far in my understanding yet and have paused my efforts. I am hoping the current cosmological heirarchy will summarise the main points for me in lay terms I can grasp easier.
I wish I had the physics/maths expertise required to understand the details in his papers.
I have listened to some of those who don't fully support CCC such as Sean Carroll,
I like Sean Carroll and buy into the idea of a multiverse.
Reply to Jackson
Yep, I find such people very inspirational. As a teenager, I decided to become academic and aim for Uni because of Carl Sagan. No single human has influenced me as much as he did and he continues to, even now when I am 58 and retired. I also oil paint so we have some common ground there.
You make it sound like philosophy constructs grammars and clarifications after the fact , by looking at the explanations of physicists and then making explicit what the physicists have already created.
You misread me (deliberately or not).
Science explains nature (i.e. transformations of phenomena, facts-of-the-matter, states-of-affairs) with testable models and philosophy interprets describes, infers the conceptual ramifications (i.e. presuppositions, implications, extrapolations) of science, no? My point is that I understand that 'science is primarily an object-discourse and philosophy a meta-discourse' (à la Tarski). Also, that this 'meta-discourse' consists of an implicit conciliance, or convergence (à la Peirce), of Sellarian "manifest" and "scientific" images of human existence (pace Heiddeger, and other anti-moderns).
But the leading edge of philosophy always beats physics to the punch. It is physics that fills in the details years after a philosophical approach produces a new architecture of thought, and then has to reconfigure anew all those details when philosophy ( or a philosophically argues physicist) subverts the old architecture.
I think your philosopher's physics-envy is showing, Joshs.
I see no evidence of this in any substantive 'history of ideas'. Philosophy and science are complementaries interpretive speculations and testable explanatory models, respectively. Just because one can draw connections between disparate domains as I've pointed out Quoting 180 Proof
... democritean Atomism seems to emphasize voids that allow for combinatorial dynamics (i.e. nonequilibria, asymmetries) of atoms (molecular/micro), which is 'intuitively analogous' to field theories; whereas, however, subsequent lucretian Materialism emphasize atoms (molar/macro) and their purported swerves, 'anticipating' statistical mechanics (i.e. compatibilist uncertainty, or "freedom").
180 Proof
Planck units fundamental relationships seem to correspond more to what ancient Greeks (& Indian C?rv?ka) had in mind than to what early modern chemists, then physicists, anachronistically (mis)labeled "atoms". The only thing that was "discovered" with regard to "atoms" was that John Dalton et al were wildly premature and mistaken.
180 Proof
does not entail a "causal priority" of one to the other of res cogitans to res extensa which just confuses cause with correlation, a category mistake.
Newtonian physics is compatible with Descartes but not with Kant, Hegel or Wittgenstein. A 19th physicist who had read and understood Kant would likely recognize inadequacies in Newtonian physics that would be invisible to Newton.
On the contrary, sir. Kant's so-called"Copernican Revolution" aims at "reconciling" Descartes and Hume as a "critical" foundation for "Newtonian physics" that also attempts to "make room for faith". That Einsteinian physics is an extension (and culmination) of "Newtonian physics" still the prevailing engineeriing paradigm demonstrates that the alleged "inadequacies in Newtonian physics" are nothing but hyperbolic, p0m0 / New Age urban legends. :sweat:
Similarly, a 21st century physicist who understands Hegelian and post-Hegelian concepts will find it necessary to reconfigure the axes around which central ideas in physics revolve.
Science explains nature (i.e. transformations of phenomena, facts-of-the-matter, states-of-affairs) with testable models and philosophy interprets describes, infers the conceptual ramifications (i.e. presuppositions, implications, extrapolations) of science, no? My point is that I understand that 'science is primarily an object-discourse and philosophy a meta-discourse' (à la Tarski). Also, that this 'meta-discourse' consists of an implicit conciliance, or convergence (à la Peirce), of Sellarian "manifest" and "scientific" images of human existence (pace Heiddeger, and other anti-moderns).
Joseph Rouse attempts to move the Sellarsian relation between manifest and scientific image in the direction of Heidegger, Kuhn and Rorty , as well as toward newer biological accounts of niche construction, by
showing them to be reciprocally determinative. Facts of the matter, states of affairs, objects of discourse ( the scientific image) respond to our inquiries ( space of reasons) in the same way an organisms niche is shaped by its behavior in relation to that environment. The continual discursive back and forth between space of reasons and objects of scientific discourse reciprocally modifies both via a dance of mutual coherence and fit, just as the organisms goal-oriented behavior defines , adjusts and is reciprocally shaped by its environment.
This back and forth between hypothesis and test describes philosophical as faithfully as it does empirical inquiry. Differences between philosophical and empirical approaches lie in the conventionality of the terms employed rather than in any fixed distinction in method of inquiry.
I agree that a philosophical meta-discourse addresses
both the manifest and scientific images, but not by restricting itself to the conceptual space of reasons (which would be impossible). Rather , its investigations enact the reciprocal dance I described above between the concept and the object, just as does empirical inquiry, and that makes it impossible to categorically separate science and philosophy on any basis.
In contrast to traditional efforts to establish the epistemic objectivity of articulated judgments, Davidson, Brandom, McDowell, Haugeland, and others rightly give priority to the objectivity of conceptual content and reasoning. They nevertheless mistakenly attempt to understand conceptual objectivity as accountability to objects understood as external to discursive practice. A more expansive conception of discursive practice, as organismic interaction within our discursively articulated environment, shows how conceptual normativity involves a temporally extended accountability to what is at issue and at stake in that ongoing interaction.(Rouse, Articulating the World)
Count Timothy von IcarusJuly 02, 2022 at 21:13#7149320 likes
You don't need to jettison the standard model to have different cosmologies. You need the Big Bang to understand the directionality of time and explain why the universe had lower entropy in the past.
The standard model is reversible, so without the Big Bang you'd just have a block universe where any "slice" representing a given moment is arbitrary.
This is a possibility that has been floated. Particularly as part of the myriad variations of string/M theory. These parallel universes would have different laws of physics.
In the case of this thread, I think "before" the Big Bang should be interpreted as "causaly prior to." Interestingly, there are models that limit themselves to just our universe that propose that the future (as we see it) may be casually prior to our present. The future "crystallizes" into the past, and the present is what this crystallization looks like. This is the crystallizing block universe.
There is also the idea that the Big Bang is the result of a supermassive black hole. We are on the inside of that black hole. Black holes in our universe would represent "baby universes" of our own universe. Pretty neat.
Unfortunately, like competing interpretations of quantum mechanics, while the theory fits observations, there is, as of yet, no predictions we could explore to differentiate between the Big Bang being our inside view of the formation of a massive black hole or it being unique.
Time' is a metric of asymmetric change (i.e. physical transformations). In the absence of any asymmetry (i.e. no orientation whatsoever) such as at / below the planck threshold, which is also prior to the BB, 'time' is not measurable [meaningful].
In other words ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/586447
Science explains nature (i.e. transformations of phenomena, facts-of-the-matter, states-of-affairs) with testable models and philosophy interprets describes, infers the conceptual ramifications (i.e. presuppositions, implications, extrapolations) of science, no?
I would say that rather than explain nature, science develops models, mathematical or otherwise, that predict happenings in nature. Philosophy might attempt to explain phenomena in more day-to-day, less technical ways. Both are most successful if done by scientists, themselves. Carl Sagan, for instance.
... rather than explain nature, science develops models ...
Predictions are deduced from models and models consist in explanations of how physical transformations can happen (vide K. Popper, D. Deutsch). Without explaining nature, from what are predictions of "happenings in nature" deduced?
Philosophy might attempt to explain phenomena ...
Do you have an example of "a philosophical explanation of phenomena" in mind? :chin:
Without explaining nature, from what are predictions of "happenings in nature" deduced?
Philosophy might attempt to explain phenomena ...
Do you have an example of "a philosophical explain of phenomena" in mind? :chin:
The obvious one, quantum mechanics. Predictions are highly if not entirely mathematical, many stemming from Schrödinger's equation, given here in stripped down form to demonstrate how it's solutions are wavelike (phasor). This concerns "particles" that are not little bowing balls:
This is not a physical wave. Very little explaining from nature there. That's left to (mostly) physicists who try to humanize what's happening with philosophical speculations:
Reply to jgill No, sir, I don't think so. QM is science. "Interpretations of QM" are philosophy (of science). The latter only describes the presuppositions and implications (i.e. interpretations) of the former does not explain the phenomena which the science models (i.e. explains) and therefore does not entail experimental predictions.
The OP's query boils down to the metaphysics of time.
The conservation laws of matter-energy claim that neither matter nor energy can either be created or destroyed. Does that mean matter & energy are (@Cuthbert) eternal (beginningless & endless). If so the OP's question can't be dismissed with statements like "north of the north pole" (@180 Proof).
Reply to Agent Smith Conservation laws, like spacetime, apply within immanent to the (this) universe. Mass-energy belongs to the (this) universe which is not "eternal" (except in Einstein's time-reversible equations). IMO, the only 'physical' candidates which might be "eternal" are the true vacuum or the bulk encompassing (our) spacetime.
Conservation laws, like spacetime, apply within immanent to the (this) universe. Mass-energy belongs to the (this) universe which is not "eternal" (except in Einstein's time-reversible equations). IMO, the only 'physical' candidates which might be "eternal" are the true vacuum or the bulk encompassing (our) spacetime.
:up:
From an astronomer-physicist's point of view, the Big Bang is when their equations break down and become meaningless. It's as if current cutting-edge science (paradigms + tools) hits a wall they can't penetrate/scale. We could cheat, but I haven't the foggiest what that would look like. Any ideas?
Reply to Agent Smith In QG, the planck era ("BB") occurred at the planck scale for which classical metrics (e.g. distance, interval, causality) do not apply. This is why the attempt to reconcile GR and QFT in a "ToE" is so intractably difficult.
In QG, the planck era ("BB") occurred at the planck scale for which classical metrics (e.g. distance, interval, causality) do not apply. This is why the attempt to reconcile GR and QFT in a "ToE" is so intractably difficult.
I see. :up: We've arrived at a place beyond which what you'll say further on will go over my head. Au revoir.
Just as mathematics is the language of the quantum world, it's probably the language of any sort of world beyond the Big Bang, or the ends of time, and it's a language that evolves. It may be a hopeless task to try to gain philosophical knowledge that interprets these worlds in the contexts of our reality.
I think Roger Penrose suggested a cyclic universe of multiple big bangs? Was that chaos theory? Perhaps there can be multiple definitions of time or different levels as there are of Infinity within mathematics?
I was told that gravity slows time down and hence the acolytes of Einstein claim that frequent flyers live longer than their twins/birthday cohorts (by a few nanoseconds) :snicker: With the entire mass of the cosmos compressed into the singularity of the Big Bang, time didn't flow/pass i.e. time didn't exist before the Big Bang. So yeah @180 Proof there is "no north of the North Pole".
:chin:
Count Timothy von IcarusJuly 04, 2022 at 14:47#7154230 likes
Reply to 180 Proof
The physicists who developed the interpretations of QM certainly didn't see their work as philosophy of science. There is a vast number of discoveries in physics that were thought up long before there was a means to test them. Indeed, some were thought up when it was believed it was impossible to test the theories, that the new particles dreamed up would be necessarily unobservable. And now these are part of the bedrock of physics.
Point being, falsifiability is a poor criteria for what makes science "science." The "presuppositions and implications," of science often end up being important, and trying to kick them out to philosophy is a fool's errand. You don't end up with a science free of such theorizing, you end up with implicit theorizing that clouds judgement and cuts down on new ideas while remaining unexamined in the background.
Some interpretations of QM have led to testable hypotheses (versions objective collapse). Other versions may be testable in the near future.
Trying to draw a hard line between what is science and what is philosophy spawned Copenhagen and what you got wasn't actually science separate from philosophy, but instead science taking on unexamined elements of logical positivism that have stuck around long after positivism died. Given the history of the field in the 20th century, where talking about so many things that turned out to be of scientific interest was handwaved away as "meaningless," I wouldn't be so dismissive about theorizing about events "before" the Big Bang.
Bell was on the short list for a Nobel Prize in physics at the time of his untimely death for work in an area that has previously been described as meaningless. Now his work is central to applied science re: quantum encryption (already in limited use) and quantum computing (in R&D and picking up speed). Mach rejected atoms as meaningless because it was thought that observing them was impossible, etc.
Reply to Tate
Not on an intimate level, well enough I suppose. In terms of plausibility, I think it is more plausible than it seems at first glance.
Imagine we do not find a good way to use observations to determine whether the Big Bang is unique or if it is just the inside view of a black hole (it's debatable if we're currently in this situation, but let's just assume it for now). What then is more likely? That the start of our universe was something wholly unique, or that it is the result of a phenomena that we now know is incredibly common?
There is no good answer there because there is no good metric for comparison. I think it just points out how, if you have two theories that might explain your data, you often default to the one that's been around longer, even if the new one might be more plausible on a common sense basis (allowing that common sense is normally bad grounds for science). Old paradigms tend to stick around by being first, not necessarily the most coherent.
But of course there is a difference as respects the question in the OP. If the Big Bang was a black hole then it might make plenty of sense to talk of time before the Big Bang. It could conceivably be a common textbook fact that we talk of something casually prior to that event, it just depends on what we find and how we come to think of it.
I think Roger Penrose suggested a cyclic universe of multiple big bangs? Was that chaos theory?
No. Chaos theory is a mathematical subject in dynamical systems in which slight variations at the beginning of a specified time period produce chaotic or unpredictable results.
But of course there is a difference as respects the question in the OP. If the Big Bang was a black hole then it might make plenty of sense to talk of time before the Big Bang. It could conceivably be a common textbook fact that we talk of something casually prior to that event, it just depends on what we find and how we come to think of it.
Say the black hole in the middle of the Milky Way is a baby universe and there are people in there. Is their time separate from ours somehow? Or how does that work?
It seems indeterminate. One way a professor recommended us to think of relativity is with distance as an X axis and time as a Y axis. You can move "faster" through one, but only by reducing your value on the other axis. At the maximum far end of the distance axis is the speed of light. Photons move the maximum amount through space and do not experience time at all. From the perspective of the photon, photons move instantly between interactions*.
With a black hole, the amount of information that is stored in one point in space exceeds the maximum possible without the creation of a black hole. Gravity warps space-time to such an extent that light can no longer escape. You appear to get a singularity and the destruction of said information.
However there is a lot of resistance to this arbitrary destruction of information in black holes, and an opposing concept has been advanced, that of black hole complementarity. The idea here is that all information going into the black hole is radiated (very slowly) back into space AND still goes through the event horizon, into the black hole.
This would seem to duplicate information and violate the no-cloning theorem, right? Potentially, but not so if no observers can ever see both versions of the information. Enter a (perhaps ad hoc) wall of fire that burns up observers at the event horizon so that they can not observe violations of the laws of physics.
We base our current concept of time on:
1. The direction of the trend from low entropy to high entropy.
2. The number of predictable cycles of a phenomena completed.
Our observers inside the black hole's sense of time will be dependent on if all black holes result in low entropy initial conditions for the universes they spawn and if the laws of physics work the same way for the new universes. If these two hold, the observers should have a time that is quite similar to our own. However, it still might be quite impossible to do an apples to apples comparison of the two times if no observers can see both universes. Comparisons would be fairly meaningless.
But that wouldn't mean that "nothing comes before the Big Bang," even if the Big Bang was the result of a black hole in a larger universe. If that premise finds support it would mean our concept of time is parochial and needs expansion. And for myriad other reasons plenty of physicists have already come out and said there appear to be deep problems with our current space-time and that it may need to be overthrown. Like I said in my other post, plenty of now foundational discoveries in physics have previously been written off as "meaningless" or worse still "metaphysics," so our ability to conceive of such changes now doesn't mean that much.
(*Even this example is somewhat fraught because we know that it's probably incorrect to talk about photon X moving between Y and Z interactions as if photon X has its own identity and we also know the photon itself only exists under specific circumstances of interaction, with a light wave existing otherwise.)
But that wouldn't mean that "nothing comes before the Big Bang," even if the Big Bang was the result of a black hole in a larger universe. If that premise finds support it would mean our concept of time is parochial and needs expansion. And for myriad other reasons plenty of physicists have already come out and said there appear to be deep problems with our current space-time and that it may need to be overthrown. Like I said in my other post, plenty of now foundational discoveries in physics have previously been written off as "meaningless" or worse still "metaphysics," so our ability to conceive of such changes now doesn't mean that much.
Comments (103)
Easy to understand. I fail to see the dilemma.
The big bang is conceived as being the beginning of space and time, with those two not being distinguishable at first. "Before the beginning of time" is not a phrase that can be given a meaning within the cosmology of big bang theory. There was never a 'before the big bang'. Of course folks come up with new theories and cosmologies on a regular basis, big bounce, etc, but such speculations need to be closely mathematically argued reformulations of the standard model beyond the scope of this forum.
Plus, the answer to the 'what if... question can easily be given, that exactly the world we see must follow from whatever came before.
By you.
like wow man
Why couldn't there be more than one instance of space time? If it starts with a big bang then ends with something else then why couldn't each such space/time bubble be its own thing? Time space could have its own instances of time space within it, like the way time flows differently with different gravitational forces.
Or parallel universes to this one, sure. I dont see why not but what if??
Ya suppose if there were other universes before this one we would need to adjust our models? They would be incorrect? What are you getting at?
Big bang only shows how to derive our current universe from that situation. Says nothing about what happened before.
Then our universe isn't so special after all and it can take that smug look off its face.
Nothing in physics can describe what happened before the Big Bang, nor that it is a unique event.
You don't know.
And?
Is there a point? I see none.
I agree with you, Im just not sure what answer you are looking for with what if we would have to adjust our models in physics I would think, lest we lose out on some potential insight the before universe might provide for our current one.
I mention parallel universes as another possibility about where big bangs fit in the universe. There could be big bangs happening within big bangs.
Yes, logically.
No.
Human beings arent omnipotent. This could be a question we just cant answer, and perhaps demonstrates our cognitive limits.
Personally I think since the question is a scientific one, and thus assumes a concept of nature (the universe), we should inquire about what we mean by universe, nature, causality and time.
If the explanation lies outside our capacities, or outside of naturalism, then we need to accept it or broaden our fundamental concepts of existence.
:up:
Quoting 180 Proof
This was Quines position, that pragmatisms relativism must ground itself in the realism of physics, a notion referred to as scientism by Putnam.
Physics IS philosophy. That is , it is an applied language of philosophical thought. The problem is that the forms of metaphysics that todays physics depends on may be already out of date when it comes to effectively addressing questions concerning the nature of time, space and genesis. We philosophers dont have to limit ourselves to the theories the physicist has to work with. We have at our disposal, if we are willing to make use of them, a host of more powerful conceptual tools to deal with these issues beyond a physical account of spacetime.
Quoting Xtrix
Good point. I would say the explanation lies outside of the approach to naturalism that one finds in todays physics.
Quoting Xtrix
Or perhaps the way we are forced to formulate these questions when we stick to the confines of physics scheme of thinking keeps us from noticing an entirely different, and I would argue more productive, way of approaching origins, time and space that is already available to us in philosophy.
My position is not [philosophy] "must ground itself in the realism of physics". You're interpretation of what I've on this thread, if this is your interpretation, is mistaken. Btw, I prefer Sellars to Quine.
However, philosophy IS NOT physics (i.e. not theoretical, or does not explain any aspect of nature).
Quoting Janus
:cool: :up:
You are approaching my level of succinctness on this forum. But I stay a step ahead by not posting.
Yes indeed. Its the fundamental branch of natural philosophy. (Perhaps astronomy is older but physics is still central.)
I think this too often gets forgotten. People want to make sharp distinctions, as if the sciences have no need for philosophy and long ago detached from it. I think hidden in that view is dogmatism namely, scientism which arises out of a justifiable disdain for organized religion and one I used to share.
But we throw the baby out with the bathwater if we make these rigid compartmentalizations. Better to break free of it. Life is messy.
If the job of explanation is to reveal interconnections, correlations and coherences among what had formerly been taken to be disparate phenomena, then both physics and philosophy explain. I think its a matter of how conventional and generic the explanation is. If empiricism takes as its role the explanation of what can be objectively measured , this is because it takes as its starting point the already conventionalized idea of the object. A philosophical explanation can burrow
deep within the unexamined pre suppositions forming the condition of possibility for the conventionalized notion of the physical object. Physicists explain objective nature, while philosophy explains the nature of the construction of the idealization physicists call objective nature.
Yes, I dont think there is any categorical way to distinguish the philosophical, the scientific-empirical , the technological, and the literary or artistic for that matter. They interpenetrate each other in complex
ways.
I think it is eternity - without beginning and without end.
[quote=Moore, A. W. 1990.The Infinite.] Wittgenstein in a lecture once asked his audience to imagine coming across a man who is saying, 5, 1, 4, 1, 3finished!, and, when asked what he has been doing, replies that he has just finished reciting the complete decimal expansion of pi backwardssomething that he has been doing at a steady rate for all of past eternity.
:lol:
[quote=Ms. Marple]Most interesting![/quote]
Eternity = Both beginningless + Endless.
What about just beginninglessness?
As for Wittgenstein's quaint gedanken experiment, in what context did it appear? What was the point he was trying to make?
Quoting Agent Smith
Maybe that "eternity" is the dimensionless point (nunc stans).
[quote=Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus]If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.[/quote]
Close, but still leaves much to be desired.
Beginning present, ending present: :yawn:
Beginning present, ending absent: [math]\infty[/math]
Neither beginning nor ending present i.e. both absent: Eternity [no symbol] (k/c/o Cuthbert)
Beginning absent, ending present: No concept so far. [math]-\infty[/math]???
It was reported by A W Moore from a lecture by W and I don't know more than that.
Like a lot of Wittgenstein's remarks it is suggestive of an argument without being explicit. Personally I think that it is about the question you raise: does it make sense to talk about a process that has an end point in time (the time 'now') whilst having no beginning (there is no 'first term' of pi written backwards).? The comparison could be this:
I announce that I am going to recite the whole of pi. I begin "3.141....." I have begun an impossible task. I will never complete it. But it's a coherent story. We know when I started and we know I will never finish.
On the other hand, if I announce that I have just finished reciting pi backwards then my claim is worse that weirdly ambitious. It is logically incoherent. If I have been reciting pi backwards then I must never have begun at any particular time - and so I can never be finishing the recitation at any particular time.
I think the example is relevant to Kant's first antinomy:
[quote=Stanford]The first antinomy concerns the finitude or infinitude of the spatio-temporal world. The thesis argument seeks to show that the world in space and time is finite, i.e., has a beginning in time and a limit in space. The antithesis counters that it is infinite with regard to both space and time.
Excelente!
All I can say is that you're on the mark - it's a Morton's fork.
Both time has a beginning and no it doesn't are incoherent, but the former is [s]more coherent[/s] less incoherent than the latter. Scylla & Charybdis, choose the lesser of two evils.
No one does.
No, just that the universe need not have a beginning or end.
Agre with that.
Then, "infinite" and "finite" need to be defined. Because "infinite" could express the existence of an infinite time, which is what I would reject.
Constant personal attacks from you. You must be a moderator.
You might find my thread on CCC (the Penrose bounce) interesting as a candidate for 'before the big bang'
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12828/the-penrose-bounce/p1
Nothing but constant personal attacks from you.
Maybe, but I tried to. I should be awarded points for that, oui monsieur!
The fact you chase me around making personal attacks with impunity tells me everything I need to know about you and this forum.
You make it sound like philosophy constructs grammars and clarifications after the fact , by looking at the explanations of physicists and then making explicit what the physicists have already created. But the leading edge of philosophy always beats physics to the punch. It is physics that fills in the details years after a philosophical approach produces a new architecture of thought, and then has to reconfigure anew all those details when philosophy ( or a philosophically attuned physicist) subverts the old architecture.
Each era of philosophy, from Descartes to Leibnitz to Kant to Hegel to Wittgenstein, anticipates an era of physics. Newtonian physics is compatible with Descartes but not with Kant, Hegel or Wittgenstein. A 19th physicist who had read and understood Kant would likely recognize inadequacies in Newtonian physics that would be invisible to Newton. Similarly, a 21st century physicist who understands Hegelian and post-Hegelian concepts will find it necessary to reconfigure the axes around which central ideas in physics revolve. Lee Smolen is an example of such a physicist today. He writes:
Philosophers of the past sometimes understood the problems we face more deeply than many of my colleagues today. For example, Leibniz was, to my understanding, the first to struggle with the main question that we face in trying to make a quantum theory of gravity-how to make a background independent description of a closed universe that contains both all its causes and all its observers. And Peirce was the first to articulate and try to solve the puzzle at the heart of the current debates in cosmology and string theory: what chose the laws that govern our universe? And what chose the initial conditions?
in many cases philosophers are working on the same questions I work on-and developing ideas related to the ideas I hope to establish-but from a bracingly different perspective.
fundamental physics has been in a crisis, due to the evident need for new revolutionary ideas-which becomes more evident with each failure of experiment to confirm fashionable theories, and the inability of those trained in a pragmatic, anti- philosophical style of research to free themselves from fashion and invent those new ideas. To aspire to be a revolutionary in physics, I would claim, it is helpful to make contact with the tradition of past revolutionaries. But the lessons of that tradition are maintained not in the communities of fashionable science, with their narrow education and outlook, but in the philosophical community and tradition.
The fact is physics does not make significant progress without regularly going through revolutions in its basic assumptions. When speculation for speculations s sake is ignored by physicists there isnrelative stagnation in the field.
I believe Leibniz was the first to conceive the universe as a computing machine.
Quoting universeness
Quick correction, my thread was not ABOUT CCC but it describes the basic concept.
What is CCC?
Quoting Jackson
yes indeed
Also, if not the first, a substantial criticism of mechanism and Newton's concept of absolute time and space.
here ... :razz:
You chase me around with insults. Have at it.
From the OP of my thread link I posted above:
The conformal cyclic cosmology ( CCC) is a cosmological model in the framework of general relativity, advanced by the theoretical physicist Roger Penrose.
Basically, it posits a cyclical universe. Our big bang was caused by the deathroes of a previous manifestation of a Universe. The interesting part is that Penrose and his team recently published his evidence that it really happened. He has called his evidence 'Hawking points,' and suggests his team has currently found 6 of them in our Universe and that their existence is direct proof of a previous Universe. He also claims that the current cosmological community has not adequately addressed his evidence yet. I think that means they must still be considering it. Exciting stuff imo!
Makes sense to me.
Well, we certainly seem to be moving at the largest scale from low to high entropy so It seems plausible that when all matter turns back to energy, then, as Penrose suggests, 'scale' becomes meaningless and we will eventually have the conditions required for a singularity inflation/expansion/big bang happening again. Another cycle. The universe would be eternal in that sense.
I await the 'adequate response' Penrose is calling for from the cosmological community!
Your representation of Penrose makes sense to me. There is nothing about the BigBang that logically prevents multiple big bangs.
I wish I had the physics/maths expertise required to understand the details in his papers.
I have listened to some of those who don't fully support CCC such as Sean Carroll, who I know is more attracted to the many-worlds interpretation but Penrose has stated in Youtube interviews that the evidence that these Hawking points came from a previous universe is very strong.
You can download a PDF of the paper he and his team published regarding the evidence here:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.01740
I downloaded the pdf and tried to research each word I did not understand but I haven't gotten very far in my understanding yet and have paused my efforts. I am hoping the current cosmological heirarchy will summarise the main points for me in lay terms I can grasp easier.
I like Sean Carroll and buy into the idea of a multiverse.
I am also a Sean Carroll fan but I am a fan of all cosmologists even when they have different theories from Carlo Rovelli to Mark Tegmark.
I have always favoured string theory and Mtheory.
Good folk as well. I use these ideas as a philosopher (and artist).
Yep, I find such people very inspirational. As a teenager, I decided to become academic and aim for Uni because of Carl Sagan. No single human has influenced me as much as he did and he continues to, even now when I am 58 and retired. I also oil paint so we have some common ground there.
You misread me (deliberately or not).
Science explains nature (i.e. transformations of phenomena, facts-of-the-matter, states-of-affairs) with testable models and philosophy interprets describes, infers the conceptual ramifications (i.e. presuppositions, implications, extrapolations) of science, no? My point is that I understand that 'science is primarily an object-discourse and philosophy a meta-discourse' (à la Tarski). Also, that this 'meta-discourse' consists of an implicit conciliance, or convergence (à la Peirce), of Sellarian "manifest" and "scientific" images of human existence (pace Heiddeger, and other anti-moderns).
I think your philosopher's physics-envy is showing, Joshs.
I see no evidence of this in any substantive 'history of ideas'. Philosophy and science are complementaries interpretive speculations and testable explanatory models, respectively. Just because one can draw connections between disparate domains as I've pointed out
Quoting 180 Proof
does not entail a "causal priority" of one to the other of res cogitans to res extensa which just confuses cause with correlation, a category mistake.
Quoting Joshs
On the contrary, sir. Kant's so-called"Copernican Revolution" aims at "reconciling" Descartes and Hume as a "critical" foundation for "Newtonian physics" that also attempts to "make room for faith". That Einsteinian physics is an extension (and culmination) of "Newtonian physics" still the prevailing engineeriing paradigm demonstrates that the alleged "inadequacies in Newtonian physics" are nothing but hyperbolic, p0m0 / New Age urban legends. :sweat:
:rofl:
(I've read iek's Less Than Nothing too.)
Joseph Rouse attempts to move the Sellarsian relation between manifest and scientific image in the direction of Heidegger, Kuhn and Rorty , as well as toward newer biological accounts of niche construction, by
showing them to be reciprocally determinative. Facts of the matter, states of affairs, objects of discourse ( the scientific image) respond to our inquiries ( space of reasons) in the same way an organisms niche is shaped by its behavior in relation to that environment. The continual discursive back and forth between space of reasons and objects of scientific discourse reciprocally modifies both via a dance of mutual coherence and fit, just as the organisms goal-oriented behavior defines , adjusts and is reciprocally shaped by its environment.
This back and forth between hypothesis and test describes philosophical as faithfully as it does empirical inquiry. Differences between philosophical and empirical approaches lie in the conventionality of the terms employed rather than in any fixed distinction in method of inquiry.
I agree that a philosophical meta-discourse addresses
both the manifest and scientific images, but not by restricting itself to the conceptual space of reasons (which would be impossible). Rather , its investigations enact the reciprocal dance I described above between the concept and the object, just as does empirical inquiry, and that makes it impossible to categorically separate science and philosophy on any basis.
In contrast to traditional efforts to establish the epistemic objectivity of articulated judgments, Davidson, Brandom, McDowell, Haugeland, and others rightly give priority to the objectivity of conceptual content and reasoning. They nevertheless mistakenly attempt to understand conceptual objectivity as accountability to objects understood as external to discursive practice. A more expansive conception of discursive practice, as organismic interaction within our discursively articulated environment, shows how conceptual normativity involves a temporally extended accountability to what is at issue and at stake in that ongoing interaction.(Rouse, Articulating the World)
You don't need to jettison the standard model to have different cosmologies. You need the Big Bang to understand the directionality of time and explain why the universe had lower entropy in the past.
The standard model is reversible, so without the Big Bang you'd just have a block universe where any "slice" representing a given moment is arbitrary.
This is a possibility that has been floated. Particularly as part of the myriad variations of string/M theory. These parallel universes would have different laws of physics.
In the case of this thread, I think "before" the Big Bang should be interpreted as "causaly prior to." Interestingly, there are models that limit themselves to just our universe that propose that the future (as we see it) may be casually prior to our present. The future "crystallizes" into the past, and the present is what this crystallization looks like. This is the crystallizing block universe.
There is also the idea that the Big Bang is the result of a supermassive black hole. We are on the inside of that black hole. Black holes in our universe would represent "baby universes" of our own universe. Pretty neat.
Unfortunately, like competing interpretations of quantum mechanics, while the theory fits observations, there is, as of yet, no predictions we could explore to differentiate between the Big Bang being our inside view of the formation of a massive black hole or it being unique.
In other words ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/586447
Good to know, thank you.
I would say that rather than explain nature, science develops models, mathematical or otherwise, that predict happenings in nature. Philosophy might attempt to explain phenomena in more day-to-day, less technical ways. Both are most successful if done by scientists, themselves. Carl Sagan, for instance.
Predictions are deduced from models and models consist in explanations of how physical transformations can happen (vide K. Popper, D. Deutsch). Without explaining nature, from what are predictions of "happenings in nature" deduced?
Do you have an example of "a philosophical explanation of phenomena" in mind? :chin:
The obvious one, quantum mechanics. Predictions are highly if not entirely mathematical, many stemming from Schrödinger's equation, given here in stripped down form to demonstrate how it's solutions are wavelike (phasor). This concerns "particles" that are not little bowing balls:
[math]\frac{d\Psi }{dt}=iC\Psi (t)\text{ }\Rightarrow \text{ }\Psi (t)=K{{e}^{iCt}}=K\left( \cos (Ct)+i\sin (Ct) \right)[/math]
This is not a physical wave. Very little explaining from nature there. That's left to (mostly) physicists who try to humanize what's happening with philosophical speculations:
Interpretations of QM
Yes, ontological vs epistemological and all is a subject for philosophers of physics.
Do you understand the theory that we might be in a black hole?
The conservation laws of matter-energy claim that neither matter nor energy can either be created or destroyed. Does that mean matter & energy are (@Cuthbert) eternal (beginningless & endless). If so the OP's question can't be dismissed with statements like "north of the north pole" (@180 Proof).
:smile:
:up:
From an astronomer-physicist's point of view, the Big Bang is when their equations break down and become meaningless. It's as if current cutting-edge science (paradigms + tools) hits a wall they can't penetrate/scale. We could cheat, but I haven't the foggiest what that would look like. Any ideas?
I see. :up: We've arrived at a place beyond which what you'll say further on will go over my head. Au revoir.
:chin:
The physicists who developed the interpretations of QM certainly didn't see their work as philosophy of science. There is a vast number of discoveries in physics that were thought up long before there was a means to test them. Indeed, some were thought up when it was believed it was impossible to test the theories, that the new particles dreamed up would be necessarily unobservable. And now these are part of the bedrock of physics.
Point being, falsifiability is a poor criteria for what makes science "science." The "presuppositions and implications," of science often end up being important, and trying to kick them out to philosophy is a fool's errand. You don't end up with a science free of such theorizing, you end up with implicit theorizing that clouds judgement and cuts down on new ideas while remaining unexamined in the background.
Some interpretations of QM have led to testable hypotheses (versions objective collapse). Other versions may be testable in the near future.
Trying to draw a hard line between what is science and what is philosophy spawned Copenhagen and what you got wasn't actually science separate from philosophy, but instead science taking on unexamined elements of logical positivism that have stuck around long after positivism died. Given the history of the field in the 20th century, where talking about so many things that turned out to be of scientific interest was handwaved away as "meaningless," I wouldn't be so dismissive about theorizing about events "before" the Big Bang.
Bell was on the short list for a Nobel Prize in physics at the time of his untimely death for work in an area that has previously been described as meaningless. Now his work is central to applied science re: quantum encryption (already in limited use) and quantum computing (in R&D and picking up speed). Mach rejected atoms as meaningless because it was thought that observing them was impossible, etc.
https://aeon.co/essays/a-fetish-for-falsification-and-observation-holds-back-science
Not on an intimate level, well enough I suppose. In terms of plausibility, I think it is more plausible than it seems at first glance.
Imagine we do not find a good way to use observations to determine whether the Big Bang is unique or if it is just the inside view of a black hole (it's debatable if we're currently in this situation, but let's just assume it for now). What then is more likely? That the start of our universe was something wholly unique, or that it is the result of a phenomena that we now know is incredibly common?
There is no good answer there because there is no good metric for comparison. I think it just points out how, if you have two theories that might explain your data, you often default to the one that's been around longer, even if the new one might be more plausible on a common sense basis (allowing that common sense is normally bad grounds for science). Old paradigms tend to stick around by being first, not necessarily the most coherent.
But of course there is a difference as respects the question in the OP. If the Big Bang was a black hole then it might make plenty of sense to talk of time before the Big Bang. It could conceivably be a common textbook fact that we talk of something casually prior to that event, it just depends on what we find and how we come to think of it.
No. Chaos theory is a mathematical subject in dynamical systems in which slight variations at the beginning of a specified time period produce chaotic or unpredictable results.
Say the black hole in the middle of the Milky Way is a baby universe and there are people in there. Is their time separate from ours somehow? Or how does that work?
My mistake. Conformal cyclic cosmology
It seems indeterminate. One way a professor recommended us to think of relativity is with distance as an X axis and time as a Y axis. You can move "faster" through one, but only by reducing your value on the other axis. At the maximum far end of the distance axis is the speed of light. Photons move the maximum amount through space and do not experience time at all. From the perspective of the photon, photons move instantly between interactions*.
With a black hole, the amount of information that is stored in one point in space exceeds the maximum possible without the creation of a black hole. Gravity warps space-time to such an extent that light can no longer escape. You appear to get a singularity and the destruction of said information.
However there is a lot of resistance to this arbitrary destruction of information in black holes, and an opposing concept has been advanced, that of black hole complementarity. The idea here is that all information going into the black hole is radiated (very slowly) back into space AND still goes through the event horizon, into the black hole.
This would seem to duplicate information and violate the no-cloning theorem, right? Potentially, but not so if no observers can ever see both versions of the information. Enter a (perhaps ad hoc) wall of fire that burns up observers at the event horizon so that they can not observe violations of the laws of physics.
We base our current concept of time on:
1. The direction of the trend from low entropy to high entropy.
2. The number of predictable cycles of a phenomena completed.
Our observers inside the black hole's sense of time will be dependent on if all black holes result in low entropy initial conditions for the universes they spawn and if the laws of physics work the same way for the new universes. If these two hold, the observers should have a time that is quite similar to our own. However, it still might be quite impossible to do an apples to apples comparison of the two times if no observers can see both universes. Comparisons would be fairly meaningless.
But that wouldn't mean that "nothing comes before the Big Bang," even if the Big Bang was the result of a black hole in a larger universe. If that premise finds support it would mean our concept of time is parochial and needs expansion. And for myriad other reasons plenty of physicists have already come out and said there appear to be deep problems with our current space-time and that it may need to be overthrown. Like I said in my other post, plenty of now foundational discoveries in physics have previously been written off as "meaningless" or worse still "metaphysics," so our ability to conceive of such changes now doesn't mean that much.
(*Even this example is somewhat fraught because we know that it's probably incorrect to talk about photon X moving between Y and Z interactions as if photon X has its own identity and we also know the photon itself only exists under specific circumstances of interaction, with a light wave existing otherwise.)
I see. Thank you!