Philosophy Now Forum

First, some would say there was no Big Bang and the universe has no beginning nor end in time. So be it, in this thread let's assume there was a Big Bang. The question before us is what started the Big Bang? If the universe is finite, as the evidence suggests, then what could have started it? God? Something lighting the fuse? What could it be?

PhilX

Philosophy Explorer wrote:First, some would say there was no Big Bang and the universe has no beginning nor end in time. So be it, in this thread let's assume there was a Big Bang. The question before us is what started the Big Bang? If the universe is finite, as the evidence suggests, then what could have started it? God? Something lighting the fuse? What could it be?

PhilX

Physics doesn't concern itself with what caused the Big Bang because physics doesn't involve itself with first cause arguments. Theology and philosophy deal with such arguments. Physics can only tell us what happened a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang , including what has happened up until the present.

beans

-Imp

Philosophy Explorer wrote:First, some would say there was no Big Bang and the universe has no beginning nor end in time. So be it, in this thread let's assume there was a Big Bang. The question before us is what started the Big Bang? If the universe is finite, as the evidence suggests, then what could have started it? God? Something lighting the fuse? What could it be?

PhilX

It just doesn't make sense in general, and even if there was a proposed cause to the 'Big Bang' that would still mean that existence is infinite and not finite, and would still disprove of the idea of something coming out of nothing.

WanderingLands wrote:

Philosophy Explorer wrote:First, some would say there was no Big Bang and the universe has no beginning nor end in time. So be it, in this thread let's assume there was a Big Bang. The question before us is what started the Big Bang? If the universe is finite, as the evidence suggests, then what could have started it? God? Something lighting the fuse? What could it be?

PhilX

It just doesn't make sense in general, and even if there was a proposed cause to the 'Big Bang' that would still mean that existence is infinite and not finite, and would still disprove of the idea of something coming out of nothing.

The problem is that when physicists such as Krauss talk about "nothing" Some physicists don't mean it in a philosophical sense. Some physicists prefer to change the definition of "nothing" to "something" This of course doesn't sit very well with some philosophers. Krauss would probably want to say that recent discovers in the area of quantum mechanics has resulted in the laws of physics to allowing for such a thing.

Obviously the beginning of the universe is controversial. No one knows the answer.

Ginkgo wrote:The problem is that when physicists such as Krauss talk about "nothing" They don't mean it in a philosophical sense.

I borrowed A universe from nothing from my daughter's guitar teacher. Didn't read a lot of it before I felt compelled to return it, but from what I can gather it is some version of -1+1=0. What I don't get is that if the quantum vacuum is the arena in which the Big Bang occurred, how come the Big Bang hasn't changed it?

Ginkgo wrote:No one knows the answer.

Ain't that the truth?

uwot wrote: I borrowed A universe from nothing from my daughter's guitar teacher. Didn't read a lot of it before I felt compelled to return it, but from what I can gather it is some version of -1+1=0.

I think that is the bit where the total energy of the universe adds up to zero? Positive matter and negative energy cancel each other out.

uwot wrote: What I don't get is that if the quantum vacuum is the arena in which the Big Bang occurred, how come the Big Bang hasn't changed it?

That's ok. I don't get it either.

Well, I can't say that I understand it either, but in reading that book, I understood it to be making the following 'positive' claim (as opposed to just saying that an infinite number of big bangs have occurred and continue to occur, thus being a latter day form of the 'it's just turtles all the way down' argument):

He claims that there is evidence in our universe of the mechanism by which multiple universes could have arisen. This is perhaps different from saying that the mechanism of a multiverse theory lies outside our universe and so is unknowable in so far as our knowledge of physical laws prior to (outside of) the big bang singularity is impossible (and therefore could be God or turtles or ______ (place your crackpot theory here)).

I guess the question to Krauss could be, 'What caused whatever it is (the vacuum) that contains the quantum fluctuations?'

Ginkgo wrote: The problem is that when physicists such as Krauss talk about "nothing" Some physicists don't mean it in a philosophical sense. Some physicists prefer to change the definition of "nothing" to "something" This of course doesn't sit very well with some philosophers. Krauss would probably want to say that recent discovers in the area of quantum mechanics has resulted in the laws of physics to allowing for such a thing.

Obviously the beginning of the universe is controversial. No one knows the answer.

Nothing means just simply no thing, as in being empty, so I don't see how physicists would change the word to mean 'something'. It's a total contradiction.

WanderingLands wrote:

Ginkgo wrote: The problem is that when physicists such as Krauss talk about "nothing" Some physicists don't mean it in a philosophical sense. Some physicists prefer to change the definition of "nothing" to "something" This of course doesn't sit very well with some philosophers. Krauss would probably want to say that recent discovers in the area of quantum mechanics has resulted in the laws of physics to allowing for such a thing.

Obviously the beginning of the universe is controversial. No one knows the answer.

But then it would contradict the axiom of the Big Bang theory, which posits that the universe came from nothing. Also, nothing means just simply no thing, as in being empty, so I don't see how physicists would change the word to mean 'something'. It's a total contradiction.

The Big Bang theory is not a first cause explanation, so it doesn't posit that particular axiom. Another way of looking at it would be to say that the Big Bang doesn't theorize where the 'something' came from. The Big Bang is not a universe from nothing theory. It is a universe from something theory.

I guess the main reason they changed the definition of "nothing" was to avoid the implications of purpose. In other words, they saw more progress in postulating a "how" explanation as opposed to a "why" explanation.

Philosophy Explorer wrote:First, some would say there was no Big Bang and the universe has no beginning nor end in time. So be it, in this thread let's assume there was a Big Bang. The question before us is what started the Big Bang? If the universe is finite, as the evidence suggests, then what could have started it? God? Something lighting the fuse? What could it be?

PhilX

Foreplay

There might be a conflating of two ideas when it comes to explaining cause and how science deals with the problem.

Firstly, if we want to know the cause of the Big Bang in scientific terms then we start with a proposed singularity of infinite mass that has no explanation for time. If we were to ask, what cause this singularity to start expanding, then science can come up with an answer to this question.

Secondly, if we were to ask, who or what put the singularity there in the first place then this requires a first cause explanation. Science doesn't answer this question because science doesn't deal in first causes.

Therefore, we can conclude the Big Bang underwent a casual process, but it didn't have a first cause.

Ginkgo wrote:There might be a conflating of two ideas when it comes to explaining cause and how science deals with the problem.

Firstly, if we want to know the cause of the Big Bang in scientific terms then we start with a proposed singularity of infinite mass that has no explanation for time. If we were to ask, what cause this singularity to start expanding, then science can come up with an answer to this question.

Secondly, if we were to ask, who or what put the singularity there in the first place then this requires a first cause explanation. Science doesn't answer this question because science doesn't deal in first causes.

Therefore, we can conclude the Big Bang underwent a casual process, but it didn't have a first cause.

Ginkgo said:

"...we start with a proposed singularity of infinite mass..." doesn't make sense. The mass in our universe (detectable or otherwise from combination with dark matter) is finite. Do you mean infinite density? Even then it's difficult to swallow that the universe started from a singularity, a point. But every theory has its good and bad points and the BBT is the leading theory so I live with it with some reservations.

PhilX

Philosophy Explorer wrote:

Ginkgo wrote:There might be a conflating of two ideas when it comes to explaining cause and how science deals with the problem.

Firstly, if we want to know the cause of the Big Bang in scientific terms then we start with a proposed singularity of infinite mass that has no explanation for time. If we were to ask, what cause this singularity to start expanding, then science can come up with an answer to this question.

Secondly, if we were to ask, who or what put the singularity there in the first place then this requires a first cause explanation. Science doesn't answer this question because science doesn't deal in first causes.

Therefore, we can conclude the Big Bang underwent a casual process, but it didn't have a first cause.

Ginkgo said:

"...we start with a proposed singularity of infinite mass..." doesn't make sense. The mass in our universe (detectable or otherwise from combination with dark matter) is finite. Do you mean infinite density? Even then it's difficult to swallow that the universe started from a singularity, a point. But every theory has its good and bad points and the BBT is the leading theory so I live with it with some reservations.

PhilX

Hi Phil Ex,

Thanks for picking up on that. Yes, I did mean to say infinite density.

Philosophy Explorer wrote: Even then it's difficult to swallow that the universe started from a singularity, a point. But every theory has its good and bad points and the BBT is the leading theory so I live with it with some reservations.

PhilX

I guess it is also hard to swallow for the people who do the mathematics and end up with infinities as a solution. I think it just means the theory they are using breaks down at small scales.