In the Beginning

In The Sound of Music, Julie Andrews sang:

Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could..

(Lyrics from Something Good.)

I suspect she wasn’t trying to make a philosophical statement but in fact she made a very profound statement.

When we study cosmology we try to understand how the universe began. Science suggests that the universe has been in existence some thirteen billion years or so. Perhaps the most regarded story of how the universe came to be is the “Big Bang Theory”. It, indeed, proposes that everything came from nothing. Not only was all matter created in the Big Bang but time was as well. So there is no point in asking what existed before the Big Bang because there was no “before”. In summary as Pierre St Clair explains:

The modern science story describes a spontaneous occurrence that arose from nothing and from which everything that exists has evolved. Creation came out of nowhere, from nobody.

Scientists speculate that the universe materialised from a “singularity” that was smaller than an atom but it contained all the matter and energy that was to become our universe!

Moreover, the theory proposes that the stuff emanating from the singularity expanded at an extremely high velocity far greater than the speed of light. The universe grew from being tinier than an atom to an unknown enormous size in a fraction of a second.

The hypothesis of instant expansion known as cosmic inflation defies all known laws of physics. Einstein had, for example, shown that no matter could travel at the speed of light because in doing so its mass approached infinity.

All of this seems to me to be even more implausible explanation of creation than the creation myths of our major religions.

In trying to understand these perplexing phenomena most of us have fallen back to the dictates of classical physics. Classical physics (and mathematics as well) have been viewed as deterministic.

According to this point of view, in any situation if the initial conditions are sufficiently understood and defined, later outcomes are thought to be predictable.

But the notion of the world being deterministic was first challenged by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Werner Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics. In 1926, at the age of 25, he gained acclaim for the publication of his Uncertainty Theorem. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is a fundamental concept in quantum mechanics that states that it’s not possible to precisely measure two complementary properties of a particle at the same time.

Consequently, the more accurately the position of a particle is known, the less accurately its momentum can be known, and vice versa.

Just five years later the Czech logician and mathematician Kurt Gödel published his First Incompleteness Theorem. The American mathematician, Douglas Hofstadter, who was a disciple of Gödel, translates Gödel’s Theorem thus:

All complete, axiomatic formulations of number theory contain undecidable propositions.

He goes on to explain that we can have a complete number theory that results in undecidable propositions or an incomplete number theory which doesn’t present such contradictions, But you can’t have both!

As you can see, this is somewhat analogous to Heisenberg’s Principle.

So within a decade, we have the deterministic nature of both physics and mathematics being challenged. Consequently our perception of the nature of the universe has become more and more mysterious. With determinism discounted, Quantum Theory evolved to show that the essence of the universe is probabilistic and therefore, in a way, unpredictable.

As Quantum Theory developed classical physics was further challenged. Without delving too deeply into Quantum Theory the emerging dilemma faced by physicists has been described by physicist Federico Faggin as follows:

The view of the universe that emerges from the description of quantum states (particles) is very strange because the variables assume a defined value only when two particles interact, but none of the variables are defined prior to their interaction. Furthermore, the basis of reality is indetermination and granularity instead of continuity. A particle behaves like a probability wave that can take all possible paths, and thus it may be found in a volume of space, rather than moving with a precise trajectory.

However, the wave has little in common with the waves of classical physics, which are collective phenomena produced by a vast number of classical particles. In other words, particles do not exist as we imagined them, for they can only be described as probability waves that allow us to predict the probabilities of possible states in which they can be detected. And yet the specific state that will manifest is not predicted by the theory when the “collapse of the wave function” occurs.

But despite this indeterminacy, we can in fact, detect such particles. Why is that? What mechanism is required to collapse the probabilistic wave function so that something real and concrete manifests itself? What is the catalyst that converts something that is smeared probabilistically all over the place into something we can measure and observe? The answer, to me, seems to be consciousness.

This is the paramount case of the effect of the observer on the observed. When we intervene in the quantum field there is no longer a probability wave but something concrete emanates like a subatomic particle and we know exactly where it is. This in fact is a contribution to the creation process. The intervention of consciousness seems to be the trigger that creates reality

As my long term readers will appreciate, I have always advocated that the essential stuff of the universe is not matter but consciousness. Contrary to the claims of the determinists like Daniel Dennett, consciousness did not evolve through a complexification process out of matter, matter evolved from the intervention process of consciousness into the world of quantum possibilities.

So however you might categorise the process that created the universe it seems logical that it could only occur because consciousness already existed. There would not be a substrate of matter underpinning our universe unless consciousness collapsed the probabilistic quantum state to a substantial reality.

This might prove to be of some consolation for religious people that maintain that God created the universe. Their presupposition that before the creation God existed and it was God who was the engineer of creation might indeed, in some sense, be correct.

According to the scholar of religion, Karen Armstrong, an interpretation of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible suggests God didn’t create the universe out of nothing but created the universe by bringing order out of chaos. Quantum Theory suggests this is the role of consciousness. Without the intervention of consciousness the universe is merely an ocean of potentialities awaiting to be triggered. Consciousness provides that trigger.

John Wheeler, the theoretical physicist and protégé of the famous quantum theorist Werner Heisenberg, coined the notion of the “participatory universe”. He believed that every observation not only impacted on the nature of the universe but on the nature of the observer.

According to Wheeler the term “observer” should be replaced with term “participant” in order to acknowledge the role of consciousness in shaping the universe. He believed that without an observer the “real” did not exist. In essence not only are you observing the universe you are in some way shaping it.

Wheeler’s work shows us that the universe is not static. It is a dynamic living field of possibilities which your participation is transforming into a particular reality.

Wheeler said,

When you peer down into the deepest recesses of matter or at the farthest edge of the universe, you see, finally, your own puzzled face looking back at you.

In addition he opined:

We are participators in bringing into being not only the near and here but the far away and long ago. We are in this sense, participators in bringing about something of the universe in the distant past and if we have one explanation for what’s happening in the distant past why should we need more?

So, provocatively, he asserts that not only is our consciousness forging the physical universe but it also has an impact on our notion of time, not only shaping the present and the future but in the creation of our past.

Historically our concept of the universe was dominated by Cartesian dualism. It was based on the premise that mind and matter were exclusively different.

(This gave impetus to the old aphorism:

What is Mind? No Matter!

What is matter? Never mind!)

But as I have intimated above, this has created the delusion of materialism and determinism.

Classical physics identifies with matter and suggests that reality can only be derived from the observation of matter in its various forms and interactions. The mind, however, is viewed as epiphenomenal because only matter can influence reality.

German quantum physicist, Max Planck knew this wasn’t the case. He wrote:

I consider consciousness as fundamental and matter is a derivative of consciousness. We cannot go beyond consciousness. Everything we talk about, everything we consider as existing, requires consciousness.

Thus Quantum Physics has showed this (the primacy of matter) is an erroneous assumption. We have seen above that mind has a determinative influence on matter. In the quote above Wheeler even suggests that mind has also a determinative effect on time! Consciousness does not only determine the what in the universe but also the when.

So let me suggest to you that in classical physics we have a simplistic concept of time. Time is not some linear dimension that started with the “Big Bang” or with God’s creation of the universe. Time is just another dimension entangled in a reality emanating from the quantum vacuum. Time is ever present everywhere in its entirety just as space is. That we see it as a linear single dimension is a limitation of our curtailed human consciousness.

In this way it makes no sense to say “In the beginning” for there was no beginning. Neither is there any end. Linear representations of time all culminate in an infinite regression of despair.

If you believe that in the beginning God created the universe we are forced to confront the dilemma of where did God come from? Even if you assume, as I tend to do, that the essential creative essence is consciousness, (and that might be just another manifestation of God in non-religious terms), in a universe that has some defined beginning we are again compelled to explain where and when consciousness evolved.

So perhaps “the beginning” was the moment of achievement of human self-awareness. And this created the illusion of linear time.  Human consciousness is but a sliver of the universal consciousness and unfortunately it does not have the capacity to understand time in its entirety. I am sure that if we had the enhanced capacity of universal consciousness it would be obvious there is no beginning and there is no end!