Only in the title of this thread is Epicurus mentioned, not at all in my article. I wrote this article many years ago, long before I met you great Epicureans. But I think you will nevertheless feel his presence sufficiently that this article will be welcomed.
What Would Epicurus Think of the Big Bang?
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I suspect that some will have hesitation, but before anyone else responds I want to be on the record.....
I one hundred percent agree with your reasoning, and all the Lawrence Krauss's in the world and his cohorts will never convince me otherwise!
This is not a matter of philosophy vs science, it's a matter of philosophy informing a debate in which scientists of good faith are on both sides of the argument, and the resolution of such issues being ultimately a matter of philosophy.
I doubt there would ever come a time when I would consider the position you take in this article to be a "requirement" here at the forum, but as someone recently said in another context about the issue of Epicurean theology, it's a shame that this position doesn't always get the respect it deserves within Epicurean circles! It is certainly the position that Epicurus himself took.
Thank you for posting this. It would be relatively easy for me or one of us to take he PDF and reduce it to plain text, but I would appreciate it if you would post it into a post rather than just the PDF. I would like to take this and add it into our "articles" section as a featured article. No doubt over time there will be good-faith dissenters, but I think this is the position that Epicurus would take even today, and this needs to be on any site devoted to Epicurean philosophy.
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Thank you, Cyrano. I truly think this is a work of brilliance and courage. I fully agree with you. Bravo!
We must reject the absurdities of matter coming in and out of existence, an origin of the universe, or any influence on empty space.
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What a coincidence, I was also lately wondering about the Big Bang Theory and Epicurean cosmology, which puts forth a steady-state universe.
I did find this article, which covers Epicurean atomism and the Big Bang ("CAN ATOMS MAKE YOU HAPPY?"): https://classicsvic.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/penwillvol22.pdf
Reading about other steady-state models online, and quasi-steady-state models, had matter being created and destroyed, which makes sense for QSS models because they incorporate "mini-bangs" within the greater universe. And then we have eternal closed universes. I'm not a physicist so I am not able to comment, but I can say that theoretical physics is very hard to understand, and very theoretical indeed.
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I'm not a physicist so I am not able to comment, but I can say that theoretical physics is very hard to understand, and very theoretical indeed.
Yes, very true, and we need people who really want to dig into these issues to help discuss them intelligently and persuasively.
But in the meantime, I am not going to let the Lawrence Krausses of the world bother me by injecting doubt as to the existence of a possible supernatural factor into my day to day life.
Am I supposed to believe that just maybe some miracle happened with no explanation at all, and that I need to rely on some quantum physicist about whom I know nothing personally and whose good faith and integrity I have no way to judge (and considerable reason to doubt) to tell me how to think about the ultimate issues of nature? I think not.
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Here is an imperfect transcription of the article by Cyrano. If possible, Cyrano, can you give us more about the background of when you wrote this, etc?
BIG BANG OR BIG FARCE?
After all the blather about Big Bang, Big Bang, a burning question still consumes me: can it really have happened that way? Did the entire vast universe of pulsars and quasars, of neutron stars and supernova, of galaxies – billions and billions of galaxies each with billions and billions of stars – did all this originate from a single explosion the size of a pinpoint? No, not even a pinpoint! Not a point or a thing at all but “a tiny bubble of spacetime a billion- trillion-trillionth of a centimeter across.”
And this infinitesimal bubble “popped spontaneously into existence out of a pure vacuum as the result of a random quantum fluctuation.” That is to say our vast and immeasurable universe came from NOTHING! Well, I myself am nothing - nothing that is, in the way of a physicist, astronomer or cosmologist. But I am intensely interested in this question as a lover of truth – as a philosopher. For that is what the word philosophy means: ‘love of wisdom.’
And as such I echo Sir Arthur Eddington who said “Philosophically the notion of a beginning of the present order is repugnant to me. I simply do not believe the present order of things started off with a bang. The expanding Universe is preposterous.”Let us make no mistake about what the big bangers are saying. Astrophysicists Fang Li Zhi and Li Shu Xian, in an article entitled “Creation of the Universe” (World Scientific, 1989) certainly make it absolutely clear: “The Time and space, they tell us, did not exist before the big bang. The universe emerged out of a “singularity” they say, a situation in which the laws of physics as we know them do not apply. None of the laws of science pertain. No, not the most fundamental law of science, the conservation of matter, the law which states that matter cannot be created nor destroyed but simply changes form incessantly. No, not even relativity is relevant, and it is relativity theory after all that big bangers employ for their mystifying hypothesis.
evolution of the universe from nothing is described by the big bang theory.”
What can this mean? The laws of science fail at the big bang and it is not possible to know what happened - or if anything at all happened - before it. Think of it: We must accept an absolute limit on our knowledge, on our understanding of how the world works. We must not question: time began with the big bang and all questions about time before the big bang - before there was time! - are pointless. We may not speak of a cause of the Big Bang – it is impossible, impermissible.
Where have we heard this before? Have not we heard theologians claim that God created the universe, and when we ask them who created God, they arrogantly answer that such questions are beyond mortal minds?In 1981 at a cosmology conference organized in the Vatican scientists were told that it was permissible to scrutinize the progression of the universe after the big bang, but they should not look into the big bang itself because that was the instant of Creation and hence the act of God.
Yes, the Catholic Church gets a big kick out of the big bang. As far back as 1951 Pope Pius XII declared that the Big Bang confirms the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, the dogma that the universe was created out of nothing.
We rightly deplore attempts of religionists to warp the great channel of evolution into the dead end of ‘intelligent design’. And yet the big bang is just such a perverting project.
The big bang is the big daddy of intelligent design: it is creationism pure and simple. A universe created in an instant is the work of a creator. The big bang is just old religious creationism all dressed up in sophisticated scientific gear.
“What is the ultimate solution to the origin of the Universe? The answers provided by the astronomers are disconcerting and remarkable. Most remarkable of all is the fact that in science, as in the Bible, the world begins with an act of creation” - this from astronomer Robert Jastrow in Until the Sun Dies, 1977.
Cosmology today is all enmeshed with religion. Theologians, physicists, novelists, all tell us that big bang theory bears witness to a Christian creator. In the New York Times Book Review (February 1989), we are informed in a front-page article that because of the big bang scientists and novelists are reverting to God.
Does big bang creation differ from biblical creation? No, only in the number of years! The Bible claims that creation took place about 4000 years BC, and the big bang asserts that creation occurred about 15 billion years ago. The whole thing reeks of religion! They say the big bang left a background radiation. I say their Big Bang left a Big Stink: God FARTED and that was the Big Bang.And so philosophically the big bang is not acceptable. But it is also unacceptable scientifically. It actually spells the death of science. Science is nothing unless it discovers the causes of empirical events. To nothing less than the ultimate repudiation of causality is where the big bang takes us.
The big bang is not a theory for atheists but for theists. A knowledgeable atheist is a scientific materialist: matter and energy exist forever and ever with no beginning and no end, constantly changing, moving, evolving... Why cannot the material universe exist from all eternity? Why not indeed! Because it is heresy to believe so, Augustine warned us two thousand ago. Infinity, he argued, belongs only to the deity; it is forbidden to the material universe. To say that the material universe is unlimited is to mistake the essential distinction between nature and God. It eliminates the need for God. Yes, Augustine sure knew whereof he spoke!It would be amusing were it not so tragic that so many people have a problem with an infinite material universe but have no difficulty at all in accepting a god existing in eternity. Isn’t the one as easy to imagine as the other? No, in fact the material universe is far easier to come to terms with than futile attempts to grasp a ghost.
The philosophical objections to the big bang are colossal, but let us turn to strictly scientific objections. “The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed - inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples.” So states an “Open Letter to the Scientific Community” (signed by over 300 scientists and others) and published in New Scientist, May 22, 2004.
“The successes claimed by the theory’s supporters,” it continues, “consist of its ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles.”“In cosmology today doubt and dissent are not tolerated, and young scientists learn to remain silent if they have something negative to say about the standard big bang model. Those who doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding.” The entire statement can be read at cosmologystatement.org
So vehement is opposition to anyone who criticizes the big bang that a madman reviewing Eric Lerner’s book, The Big Bang Never Happened: A Startling Refutation of the Dominant Theory of the Origin of the Universe, wrote that his work “deserves to be burned.”
For my part I will burn at the stake like Bruno but I will uphold as he did the concept of an infinite material universe. I will reverse Pascal’s Wager: I’ll bet my life on materialism. I will shout with Shakespeare in the thunderous tones of King Lear “Nothing will come of nothing!”Something always comes from something. Where did the superclusters of galaxies come from? The moon orbits the earth, the earth orbits the sun, the sun travels around the Milky Way galaxy. Our galaxy circles around in a neighborhood of galaxies called a cluster, and a bunch of clusters rotate as a unit in a supercluster. A number of superclusters form a unit which in turn moves around its hub and this apparently goes on forever. In any case, supercluster complexes have been observed - huge sheets of galaxies called ‘great walls’ stretching over a billion light-years of space. They take hundreds of billions of years to form. But the pathetic big bang is only 15 billion years old. There is more in heaven and earth, dear big banger, than is dreamt of in your philosophy!
Yes, new objects are discovered constantly, larger and larger and further away, with absolutely no end in sight. Yet man, unable (or unwilling!) to comprehend a never-ending material universe will not take 'infinite' for an answer but must impose his ‘final limit’ on everything.
It is utter gibberish to chatter about the “creation of matter” – nonsense to talk about the “beginning of time.” Matter can neither be created nor destroyed and it exists through and only through time, space, and motion. The universe exists through all eternity, forever changing, moving, evolving... Matter and energy, energy and matter forever! A ‘beginning’ or an ‘end’ to the material universe? Every effort to find one will foolishly fail. And the big bang theory will fall before our earth makes ten more trips around the sun.
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Are there references to substantiate the claimed facts in this essay? For example:
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In any case, supercluster complexes have been observed - huge sheets of galaxies called ‘great walls’ stretching over a billion light-years of space. They take hundreds of billions of years to form. But the pathetic big bang is only 15 billion years old.The largest known structure in the observable universe is the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall. It is about 10 billion light years in length. I can find no reference to it - or any other structure in the universe - taking "hundreds of billions of years to form".
The age of the observable universe is approximately 13.8 billion years and is approximately 93 billion light years across (and expanding). There are explanations - supported by the math - as to why a simple speed of light and time calculation for distances does not work for determining its size (or distances).
Frequently Asked Questions in Cosmology
The observable universe means something different than "the universe", and the former is usually what is meant when people talk about it. Is it the former that is referred to in this essay?
The universe is potentially infinite - meaning that the size of the universe is currently unknown - and that link discusses it. The way I think of it is if I go outside in the dark with a candle, I only see as far as the light reaches. But there is more beyond it that I cannot see and is therefore unknown to me. As far as I know, there is only one constraint put on its age - it is at least 13.8 billion years old. It could possibly be infinite.
QuoteBut in the meantime, I am not going to let the Lawrence Krausses of the world bother me by injecting doubt as to the existence of a possible supernatural factor into my day to day life.
I have his book, A Universe from Nothing, on my bookshelf, but I haven't read it yet (so many books, so little time) so I can't really comment on his theories. Has Krauss claimed / implied a supernatural force was responsible or is this being inferred? From his talks with Dawkins (that I've seen), he rails pretty hard against such things.
As a disclaimer, I am not a cosmologist and don't pretend to know the field well. With my rudimentary understanding I don't see how believing the theory of the Big Bang is inconsistent with Epicureanism or suggests a supernatural force.
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These are great questions and no I did not mean to imply that Krauss himself suggested a supernatural explanation, so I do need to clarify that. I read his book and watched his debate with Richard Dawkins on youtube so that's why his name is prominent in my mind.
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For reference, here's a thread from 2020 where we were discussing this topic:
It includes a link to the Dawkins/Krauss video.
PS. I feel the need to emphasize that the Epicueans clearly conveyed that "nothing comes from nothing." But the texts may use that shorthand but elsewhere clarify that theymean "nothing comes from that which did not previously exist." Basically, everything gets recycled into something else in the infinite expanse of the universe - not just our little cosmos here but what Epicurus and others called The All in the texts, To Pan ΤΟ ΠΑΝ... Latin uses universus (From ūnus (“one”) + versus (“turned”), hence literally "turned into one") with the same meaning.
In modern physics, they're not saying "nothing comes from nothing" either. Their confusing shorthand provocative layman's "nothing" is just the quantum fields permeating all of space. The idea of the cosmos - our observable universe - coming out of a quantum fluctuation... similar to what some cosmologists posit is the ultimate fate of our cosmos (NOT the universe remember) an unimaginable number of billions and trillions of years in the future - strikes me as elegant. The new cosmos and our current one doesn't/ didn't come from nothing. It was birthed from the very existing underlying structure of the infinite universe.
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btw, thatchickinpa ... I revised my post above with a lengthy PS after you
'd it. If you want to take that back, I won't be hurt 
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For y'all's consideration (I have not watched the entire hour, but it's geared toward a lay audience)
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I am watching Don's quantum fields video and I am reminded almost immediately that:
1 - Theoretical physicists tend toward the long-winded, no matter how excitedly they talk.
2 - The allusions to all the many experts who came before him in the same room and in front of the same table is a stark reminder that all of them "proved" to be "wrong" in the eyes of him in the early 2000's. Would a layperson be wrong in concluding that this presentation proves that it is impossible to be "right" in physics? And if it is impossible to have confidence in any conclusion in physics, what does that say about confident in anything else? This is not a difficult point to see, so what is the answer that this and similar speakers expect to be understood by their listeners?
3 - Does not that every-changing series of positions on physics amount to a practical philosphical position that it is impossible to be right?
4 - Putting aside the conclusions that I presume he will eventually reach, what does that mean for the many generations of people who lived and died before him? Were the benighted and lost in ignorance and suffer wasted lives because they did not have the opportunity to hear his presentation at Cambridge?
5 - Why do I keep thinking about the movie "Agora" and the Pythagoreans plotting the movements of the stars and planets just before the religious mobs broke in to destroy the science/library buildings and kill Hypatia herself? Would Epicurus, had he lived long enough, cited Agora as an example of how it is not important that we know "everything" but rather enough to be sure that there are rational non-supernatural explanations of things that allow us to live happily? Is it not all too possible that the disconnect between theory and practicality is a continuing problem, and that the halls of Cambridge will one day suffer the same fate as the library at Alexandria?
6 - Doesn't this also ring of the story of Polyaenus, who saw Epicurus' point and turned at least a part of his attention to the important of living happily, rather than making the study of geometry (or math, or whatever it was) an end in itself?
7 - Surely as his excited voice shows, there is a lot of pleasure in studying theoretical physics, and I presume all of us here share that to at least some degree. It would be pretty weird of an internet-based forum not to appreciate science, and I think we have a healthy respect for it. But is the dogged pursuit of ever-smaller particles while leaving unexamined the impact that has on society (at the very least, ourselves and our friends) pretty much the equivalent of "sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll" in regard to its ultimate impact on our "health" if we pursue it without regard to wider issues?
8 - Can it really be true that someone like this speaker can divorce his scientific theories from the impact that they have on himself and his friends? Does get around to addressing that by the end of the presentation?
These are things that occur to me in the intervals of constant interruptions that have prevented me from finishing yet!
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Hi Cyrano and all!
The Big Bang doesn't necessarily have to be the beginning of things. There is a theory, called "Conformal Cyclical Cosmology", promoted by Nobel Prize Winner Roger Penrose, which seems to fit the facts. The theory postulates a universe infinite in time, with no beginning, which expands forever.
I always wondered, when thinking about the Big Bang, what happens when the universe in the far future reaches maximum entropy? BANG?
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The observable universe means something different than "the universe", and the former is usually what is meant when people talk about it. Is it the former that is referred to in this essay?
To me that's the key to almost all the issues in these debates. The chasm seems to be that for most of 2000 years when people talked in educated circles about "universe" they meant "Everything" and not "what we can observe."
In this presentation around the 45 minute mark that's where this really pops up. He starts talking about "universe" and seems to be referring to "observable universe" though the terminology to a layman is still as it was 2000 years ago - universe means everything.
I don't mean to sound like Cicero criticizing Epicurus, because it's perfectly acceptable to re-define your terms if you are going to be clear about it.
But for example in Don's video, it appears to me that he's talking to an audience of educated laymen. Educated laymen don't need to be misled by suggesting to them that "everything" is 13.8 billion years old.
It seems to me that the decision to talk in one of these terms or the other is itself a huge philosophical issue and needs to be answered philosophically if you're going to be clear and dedicated to the "truth," rather than simply being caught up in the excitement of your own pleasurable exploration of the latest theories.
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In modern physics, they're not saying "nothing comes from nothing" either. Their confusing shorthand provocative layman's "nothing" is just the quantum fields permeating all of space. The idea of the cosmos - our observable universe - coming out of a quantum fluctuation... similar to what some cosmologists posit is the ultimate fate of our cosmos (NOT the universe remember) an unimaginable number of billions and trillions of years in the future - strikes me as elegant. The new cosmos and our current one doesn't/ didn't come from nothing. It was birthed from the very existing underlying structure of the infinite universe.
Just watched it and Don's summary is good. Bottom line of his talk is that the latest theories don't talk in terms of "particles" anymore but rather "fields" - though as the lecturer demonstrates, it's easy to fall back into using the word particle because of the way fields tend to clump together. But in the end whether particle or field, most fair-minded people I think would consider a field to be "something," and thus as Don says the cosmos doesn't come from nothing, but from the underlying structure of the infinite universe.
All of which leaves the biggest questions that Epicurus wanted to address, such as whether there is something outside of "this observable universe" that these physicists are talking about (something which implicitly might be "god") totally unanswered. That larger question is at least as important to our daily lives as it is to get a better understanding of fields.
To be clear again I really enjoy watching presentations like this given by people who are obviously enthusiastic about them. But there's a line between this and philosophy that makes the latter a better contender for "Queen of the Sciences."
It seems to me that Epicurus had a great respect for "science" in the way that this lecturer is pursuing it, but he also kept it in perspective as not sufficient for determining how to live one's life. That seems to me to be the right balance.
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All of which leaves the biggest questions that Epicurus wanted to address, such as whether there is something outside of "this observable universe" that these physicists are talking about (something which implicitly might be "god") totally unanswered. That larger question is at least as important to our daily lives as it is to get a better understanding of fields.
From my perspective, Epicurus answered the question of "is something outside of 'this observable universe'" explicitly. The answer was yes. The cosmos (kosmos ΚΟΣΜΟΣ), from everything I have read, is akin to our idea of an "observable universe." I'm going to use K kosmos instead of C cosmos because we tend to define cosmos as the "universe" colloquially, but I want to get across the idea of the ancient kosmos. The kosmos is the world-system in which we live. The Library of Congress has a wonderful article on ancient Greek cosmology:
Important points:
- From the 5th c BCE, it was known we live on a sphere.
- "In this system the entire universe was part of a great sphere. This sphere was split into two sections, an outer celestial realm and an inner terrestrial one. The dividing line between the two was the orbit of the moon."
The other stars and planets were thought of as spheres, too, since even Epicurus wrote against people thinking the stars and wandering stars were gods because they were perfect spheres. So, it would have been theoretically possible to travel to other "worlds" - other spheres - without leaving our kosmos. See the diagram below...
So, that's OUR kosmos.
Epicurus also posited other kosmoi - other world-systems - that would be other kosmoi somewhere else in The All, the universe. Such as..
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with, supposedly the gods residing in the metakosmos/intermundia/"the space between world-systems."
That's my perspective on how Epicurus envisioned The Universe. There is plenty of space "outside our observable universe." It's just filled with other kosmoi with their own worlds, animals, humans, and even philosophers.
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(Regarding post #13)
In minute 15 he says that the field operates while being "never touched" and "without ever touching," and says "the field is real... you can affect things far away using the field without ever touching it."
How can something be affected without contact?
In minute 20 "There are no particles in the world, the basic fundamental building blocks of our universe are these fluid-like substances that we call fields"
What is a "substance that is not made of any particles"?
In minute 22 he tells us to imagine a total empty space, and then shows us an animation of all the "fields" that operate within a total empty space, "even when the particles are taken out, the field still exists"
How can total empty space fluctuate? What is moving?
The presenter says (agreeing with Empedocles and the Talmud) that the world is made of 4 elements and in locations where he cannot find any of these four elements (but nevertheless finds movement), he accepts the conclusion that the void itself can move and be affected! We are thus presented with the idea of immaterial force fields! With the smoke of obfuscation provided by equations which he says “parts of which no one on the planet understands,” his magic show turns into a comedy act!
I appreciate his honest comments regarding the LHC’s failures to lend much support for the standard model “all of these fantastic, beautiful ideas that we’ve had, none of them are showing up at all… my impression is that most of my community is a little bit shell-shocked by by what happened, there is certainly no consensus in the community to move forward.” (minute 55)
He may have meant to say “there is no consensus in the community [where] to move forward” but what he did say was closer to the truth. They will keep asserting their beliefs and will keep looking for any evidence that could possibly be interpreted to confirm them.
True atoms are smaller than our machines have been able to see or measure, we can only detect their effects -- this does not mean there is nothing there! Empty space does not move and can not be affected in any way.
