[lit-ideas] Re: The Final Finger of Fate
- From: John Wager <john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 13:35:03 -0500
Andy Amago wrote:
. . .There was a big bang. There was no matter before the big bang,
only unimaginably condensed energy. As the energy exploded, in that
first trillionth of second (or something like that), the energy began
to cool and precipitate out into matter.
What happened just BEFORE the "Big Bang?" It's not just theists and
deists who ask this question; physicists are beginning to think that
maybe there is a way to ask it and stay inside physics. But to just
ask the question is to raise most of the issues Aquinas et. al. tried to
deal with: Why was there something THERE, THEN and not something the
moment before? How did the universe, which obviously was "not" until
then, come into being? The big bang is evidence that the universe is
not automatically, eternally existent, but whence came it?
Hindus don't have to worry about these questions because they see the
whole big bang as part of a cycle of bang and suck, but the "suck" side
is an open question for physicists; there may not be enough stuff to
cause the suck to pull everything back into nothing again.
. . . We forget that Earth is to the universe what a grain of sand,
or perhaps one anthill, is on Earth.
Pascal wasn't bothered by this so much he gave up a fairly constraining
brand of Catholicism. And he pointed out (rightly, I think) that humans
are not SO tiny; he claimed that we are about
half-way between the infinitely small and the infinitely large. If
memory serves, the exponential
size of the universe is about 10x24 or so the size of an atom. We're
about half-way between these dimensions, give or take a few powers of ten.
And most of the vastness of space is empty, all that compaction moving
outward. I read somewhere that time is just rivers and whirlpools in
the folds and crevices of space. Control is an illusion except to the
extent that one believes that one can contro l one's *own* behavior, a
very tall order given that most behavior is unconsciously motivated.
Ultimately, we drive our cattle to market instead of embracing them as
the star stuff that the universe is, indifferently, made of.
What makes human beings even more astounding than the whole universe is
that we can talk about "the whole universe." Not only that, we can talk
about it across time and space, via electronic links, and still argue
and worry about what's for dinner; the idea of "The Universe" does not
seem to take up a very large part of our minds at all!!
"Oh, yea. 'The Big Bang.' 'The Universe.' 'God.' Where's my car keys?"
Ah, humanity!
--
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"Never attribute to malice that which can be
explained by incompetence and ignorance."
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John Wager john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx
Lisle, IL, USA
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