These Meanderings were intended to be about how all the little details of the world are fundamentally interconnected. Somehow it has morphed into explorations of interconnected historical situations, how they impact today, and how they may influence tomorrow – all bigger-picture stuff. I want to go back, eventually, to plan A but, having taken this route, it’s probably appropriate to first go all the way – to the biggest picture of all:
“What’s it all about?”
That is, to combine two icons of popular culture that try to deal with the subject, what’s the meaning of life, the universe, and everything?
So far I’ve skirted around philosophy as a topic. Without considering myself a scholar by any stretch, I’ve been digging a bit into eastern and western philosophies over the last few years, and haven’t got to the bottom of it – probably never will. If anyone ever does get to the bottom of philosophy and “work it all out”, that will be the finish of human endeavours in science and history. The key to the Theory of Everything, to my mind, actually lies in philosophy, rather than theoretical physics, quantum mechanics, comparative theology, history, or anywhere else.
Humanity, for millennia, has sought to know more about its surroundings, although there have been some historical periods, such as the early Middle Ages, where progress has been minimal. For instance, following the fall of the Roman Empire some religions sought to limit further understanding as a means to their own ends, i.e. maintaining power through the ignorance and superstition of the masses. However, heretics and ratbags have always eventually popped up and renewed the quest to come to grips with the universe, and that quest has taken a number of paths.
Today, society largely accepts Science as the mainstream means of unravelling mysteries. Early Middle Ages aside, progress was slow but steady from the time of the ancient Greeks – which was a period where scientific method didn’t exist in its current form of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, observation, and so on. Discoveries then were made by observation and hypothesis, but experiments didn’t come into play until centuries later.
Almost as late as the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, much of “science” was to do with astrology, alchemy, metaphysics, and mysticism. Even the venerable Sir Isaac Newton diverted from science to these fields in later life. From the late nineteenth century, though, things really got a gallop on, and scientific developments accelerated to the point where my pre-electricity grandparents would have great difficulty accepting that 4G internet connectivity and instant-video-information-everywhere was anything but impossible voodoo magic.
On the other hand, Theology is still pursued by many, although arguably more so in some eastern societies than western. It obviously has a place in the worldview of its adherents, but I’m not in a position to enlighten the reader on what that place may be. Whether theology’s aim is to progress humanity to a higher level, to maintain the status quo, or even to return to values of an earlier time, probably has as many answers are there are students of the subject.
And, of course, there is Philosophy, which uses thought and reason as its tools, rather than lab equipment or sacred scriptures. Philosophy translates from the Greek as “love of knowledge”, and has close relationships with historical interpretation, economics, politics and science, all of which have roots that can be traced back to particular branches of philosophy. For instance, what we now know generally as the field of science was once referred to as divided into physics and natural philosophy. It’s a symbiotic relationship, too, because philosophy changes shape under the influence of new knowledge in scientific spheres. New schools of philosophical thought arise which, in turn, influence the direction of further investigation and change in scientific and theological pursuits.
Considering economics, it’s easy to see that theories are usually developed in accordance with their owners’ philosophical worldview. Those with a more caring, sharing attitude are likely to find ways to present data that supports government-centred, socially supportive, we’re-all-in-this-together policy, whereas the individual-reward-for-individual-enterprise school will use the same data to present an argument in favour of free markets, tax cuts and trickle-down benefits. Unlike science, there can be no scale-model test run. Any change in policy is an experiment, the results of which can never be repeatable because the base conditions will have changed. No new knowledge is gained, apart from more numbers, tables and charts that start another round of debates about what to do next time.
Theology is not dissimilar, in that historical data is studied, debated, and reinterpreted, but no true new real knowledge is ever created. Unlike economics, though, the results of any change in policy or dogma cannot be measured, nor their basis proved sound or otherwise. Nor are the effects of any change felt beyond those people immediately involved, whereas changes to economic policy are felt by the majority of the population.
Science, on the other hand, is constantly recording new knowledge and, even though much of it is in the form of theory, its evidence can be measured and repeated, adding reasonable veracity. The trouble is that there are frontiers of science, especially in physics, that never seem to get any closer. No sooner is one mystery unravelled, than there’s another, previously unthought-of, mystery surrounding the whole thing.
For instance, the Greeks came with up the concept of matter being composed of atoms. They were initially all considered to be the same atom, each of which was vested with different properties that changed according to time and circumstance. That accounted for the changing nature of matter, particularly human flesh – ashes to ashes, etc. But over time, science has discovered the various elements, their isotopes, molecules and compounds, as well as the protons and electrons that make up those bits. They were then assumed to be the fundamental building blocks of the universe, until the breaking of atoms yielded a host of sub-atomic particles – quarks came first, then leptons and bosons. Each of those has a whole family of types, and there are a dozen or more of these hypothetical particles yet to be experimentally proved. All of these are to make the theory fit the observable data that arises from experimentation. No doubt, when and if they are all “proved”, there will be yet more hypotheticals, even smaller again.
On the opposite end of the size scale is the universe itself. How big is it? Pretty big, apparently, and in theory it’s expanding, at an accelerating rate at that. But what’s it expanding into? Where did it come from? The Big Bang theory gives us a singularity – a dimensionless point – that exploded 14,546,672,102 years, 3 months, a week and two days ago – give or take a few minutes. In a single instant, all the energy, matter, time and space that we now witness came into being for the first time. This concept has logical flaws as unfathomable as the never-ending sub-structure of matter itself. And we still have no clue about what causes gravity.
If we run with the Big Bang line, there’s the inevitable question. There are many questions in fact, but let’s keep it brief. Who or what triggered the Big Bang? Logically, it couldn’t happen from absolutely nothing, for absolutely no reason. That question immediately raises the God notion – whatever you consider he, she, or it, to be. A triggering requires a triggerer. And a triggerer must exist somewhere, somehow, sometime. But if God did the triggering, what triggered God? And so on.
God, and a whole pantheon of gods (small g) have been used for millennia to explain the inexplicable, the miraculous. The variations on the god theme throughout the world, and throughout recorded time, are a hundred times as many and varied as the pantheon of theoretical sub-atomic particles.
For mine, the Greater Universe always was, and always will be. Within that, our observable universe (small u for the sake of distinction) may have come into being as a result of the Big Bang, or it may not. Our observable universe may, or may not, be destined to collapse into the Big Crunch, as gravity overcomes the current expansion and reverses the process. Or it may continue to expand to an entropic, formless sea of lukewarm energy in a few trillion years. These two extreme scenarios have equal chances of being extremely wrong, depending on the proving, or otherwise, of the existence of theoretical dark matter and energy. But, whatever happens, the Greater Universe will continue to exist – indefinitely. “Forever” is possibly a more poetic way of putting it. Or how about “into eternity”?
That being the case, whether or not the Big Bang actually happened, or whether the terrifying Big Crunch will happen in 20 billion years or so, are moot points, especially given an average 80-year human lifespan.
Science tells us that our sun is a yellow dwarf star about 4.6 billion years old, formed in the same event that created the earth, and the other solar system planets and a few million stray rocks. It looks like remaining stable for another 5 billion years or so, but will eventually cool and expand enormously into a red giant, more than likely engulfing the earth. Even if it doesn’t get quite that large, conditions on earth will plainly be rather different to today. The bottom line is that the earth, as a habitable planet, is doomed.
But that’s no reason to get all maudlin, and start suffering from existential depression. As Shakespeare said: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” (The rest of the As You Like It monologue is worth a read). And the parts we have to play are very, very important – should we choose to partake in the play. More on that later.
Now comes the next dilemma – are we alone? There is a convincing school of thought that says that the universe is so large that the odds are pretty good of earthlike conditions required for life being replicated somewhere, so there must be other civilisations out there by now. But there’s no sign of them. In any case, the odds of meeting them are almost infinitely against, given the distances involved, and the apparent impossibility of time travel. For all practical purposes, we’re alone…….
Arthur C. Clarke — ‘Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.’
Read part 2 for the next, exciting instalment.
With thanks! Valuable information!