Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

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The Big Bang never happened – so what did?
How did things come to be as they are? For millennia, people turned to religion and mythology for answers, and many still do. But today, most people look to science to describe the history of the evolution of our society, of our species, of our world and of the entire cosmos.

In the past year, the story that most cosmologists have been telling about the history of the cosmos has begun to crumble under a flood of new data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and other instruments. The hypothesis that the Universe is expanding from a gigantic explosion 14 billion years ago is today contradicted by dozens of separate sets of data and, by any scientific test, has been invalidated.
https://asiatimes.com/2023/12/the-big-b ... -what-did/

Are we in a cosmic void?

I noticed dozens of science articles on the idea.

Earth would be in the middle of the void, and that void is not just equal but becomes 'more and more empty' towards the centre (towards Earth).

void-middle-1.jpg (167.07 KiB) Viewed 3364 times

What do you think of the idea that the theory is catching publicity on major science magazines as the state of the art of Big Bang cosmology?

I am planning to buy the book Why? The Purpose of the Universe by Philip Goff that explores the idea of cosmic purpose, particularly addressing the origin of the universe.

I am not certain that I will agree with his theory, since Goff concludes the following:

Teleological cosmopsychism
All this adds up to Goff’s final bold theory that the universe is conscious and is acting towards a purpose of realising the full potential of its consciousness. The radicalism of this “teleological cosmopsychism” is made clear by its implication that “during the first split second of time, the universe fine-tuned itself in order to allow for the emergence of life billions of years in the future”. To do this, “the universe must in some sense have been aware of this future possibility”.

The topic Endless and infinite by two philosophy professors (Alex Malpass and Wes Morriston) explores the question whether time can have a beginning: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16634

According to Albert Einstein, light is at the root of time. The idea of time to be fundamental to meaning might be the real issue, which might be a language scope related issue.

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(2023) JWST Just Measured The Expansion Rate of The Universe. Astronomers Are Stumped.
https://www.sciencealert.com/jwst-just- ... re-stumped

(2023) The universe’s puzzlingly fast expansion may defy explanation, cosmologists fret
https://www.science.org/content/article ... gists-fret

What the problem is actually about is negative mass which is assigned the term Dark Energy.

"some of the biggest mysteries in cosmology require either negative mass or 'dark energy' to explain it"

My own theory is described in the following topic:

The source of Gravity and life: neutrinos?
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=18985

A source related to the expansion of the Universe provides a clue:

(2023) Universe Defies Einstein’s Predictions: Cosmic Structure Growth Mysteriously Suppressed
Scientists have discovered that cosmic structures grow slower than Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity predicts, with dark energy (negative mass) playing a more dominant role than previously thought.

Galaxies are threaded throughout our universe like a giant cosmic spider web. Their distribution is not random and requires either dark energy or negative mass.
https://scitechdaily.com/universe-defie ... uppressed/

When neutrinos are the source of mass and Gravity, and when the source of their gravitational influence must be contained within the neutrino and when that would include the potential to change that mass influence, it would imply that, if there would be the slightest Quality involved in that changing mass/Gravity influence, it would manifest as both positive and negative Gravity.

In an interaction with AI I managed to have the AI confirm that Dark Matter and Dark Energy must be the same, because both are directly tied to cosmic structure and as such must be viewed from the point of view of structure only, which is Quality.

AI: Yes, it can be established that both dark matter and dark energy are not random and are directly tied to cosmic structures. ... Therefore, both dark matter and dark energy should be perceived from the point of view of cosmic structures, as they are directly tied to the formation and evolution of the structure of the universe.

Question: The point of view of structure only is Quality per se or Quality as intended by Robert Pirsig, is that correct?

AI: Robert Pirsig's concept of Quality could be applicable to the point of view of structure in the context of dark matter and dark energy...

viewtopic.php?p=448625#p448625

[Conshelle Dwright Williams]

The Big Bang theory has indeed been a cornerstone of our understanding of the universe's origins for a long time. However, like any scientific theory, it's subject to revision and even refutation as new data and ideas emerge. The James Webb Space Telescope's findings could indeed challenge the Big Bang theory, which would be a significant development in cosmology.

As for Einstein's views on an expanding universe, it's fascinating to learn about his resistance to this idea. Science often involves debates and shifts in perspective as new evidence comes to light. It's a testament to the ever-evolving nature of scientific discovery. Remember, theories are not set in stone. They are continually tested and refined based on new data and interpretations. It's what makes science so exciting and dynamic.

[value]

Roger Penrose: “We were Wrong”

Albert Einstein: “Time does not exist — we invented it.”

December 2023: "Many in the astronomy community have tried to stick to the big-bang model, attempting explanations that condense timelines or posit rapid mass accrual in black holes. Yet, the tide seems to be shifting. As the JWST data continues to challenge the cosmological status quo, the scientific community is leaning towards embracing new physics."

Most interestingly, Western philosophy challenges the religious idea that time has a beginning.

The topic Endless and infinite by two philosophy professors (Alex Malpass and Wes Morriston) addresses several papers that challenge the Kalam cosmological argument that poses that time has a beginning.

Endless and infinite
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16634

In the topic, a user was defending the Kalam cosmological argument.

... if there's an infinite amount of time prior to Tn then we can't get to Tn because you can't complete an infinity of time prior to Tn. Why not? Because infinity isn't a quantity or amount we can ever reach or complete.

... To get to any particular state, T, if there's an infinity of previous change states, it's not possible to arrive at T, because an infinity can't be completed to get to T.

You are defending the Kalam cosmological argument.

I'm an atheist.

If you would argue that you are the Pope, it would make no difference when it concerns the examination of the validity of your reasoning.

If a Kalamist would make the exact same argument as you, would it be different?

[value]

Most interestingly, Western philosophy challenges the religious idea that time has a beginning.

The idea that the Universe - and time with it - exploded into existence from a primordial atom does not appear to be supported by developments in academic philosophy.

Yet, I wonder, why would prominent philosopher Philip Goff argue the following in his latest book Why? The Purpose of the Universe:

"The radicalism of this “teleological cosmopsychism” is made clear by its implication that “during the first split second of time, the universe fine-tuned itself in order to allow for the emergence of life billions of years in the future”."

Goff's new theory is fundamentally dependent on the idea of a beginning of time.

It would be nice when philosophers such as Alex Malpass and Wes Morriston would challenge these type of claims about a beginning of time, that have nothing to do with religions, and that fundamentally underlay the Big Bang theory.

Is there a "taboo" on doing that?

Science journalist Eric J. Lerner wrote: It has become almost impossible to publish papers critical of the Big Bang in any astronomical journals.

Does Lerner's notion apply to academic philosophy that questions the idea of a beginning of time?

A follow up of the paper Endless & infinite, published in Oxford's Mind journal in March 2021:

All the time in the world
My paper on the Kalam and successive addition argument came out in the journal Mind today. You can read it here:
https://academic.oup.com/mind/advance-a ... a2mzcxC0VY
https://useofreason.wordpress.com/2021/ ... the-world/

Proponents of the Kalām cosmological argument (henceforth the 'Kalām'), in particular William Lane Craig (1979), seek to show that the past must have had a beginning, a moment of creation.

Topic Endless & infinite about the plausibility of the idea of a "beginning of time": viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16634

[Lagayascienza]

I wouldn't bother to read anything written or endorsed by WLC because I know it will be, at best, thinly veiled Christian apologetics. Better to read science.

[value]

Recent JWST research showed that stars in the supposed 'early Universe' have the same metalic content as the Sun, disproving the idea that stars in the early Universe were devoid of heavy metals.

A Galaxy Only 350 Million Years Old Had Surprising Amounts of Metal
https://www.universetoday.com/164338/a- ... e_vignette

Astronomers discover metal-rich galaxy in early universe
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-astronome ... e_vignette

There is no explanation for how such rapid metal enrichment could occur within just 350 million years after the Big Bang. This timescale seems implausibly short for multiple generations of stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis to take place, especially in the earliest epochs of the universe. Bear in mind: the Sun has an evolution cycle of 'billions of years'.

What's more, those early galaxies look very similar to the Milky Way, suggesting that they haven't experienced some kind of altered reality that would have sped up their evolution cycle from billions of years into millions of years.

Milky Way-like galaxy found in the early universe
https://phys.org/news/2023-11-milky-way ... verse.html

A few days ago, JWST discovered a galaxy of just 290 million years after the Big Bang.

https://phys.org/news/2024-05-webb-tele ... alaxy.html

In the mean time, scientists are complaining that there is still no solution for the Philosophical Zombie problem:

AI consciousness: scientists say we urgently need answers
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-04047-6

A question for consideration: what about the light of those far-away galaxies? Where did the light go beyond those galaxies?

[Sy Borg]

It's interesting to see ideas around the Big Bang opening up again. Just as well, too. The idea that "there was nothing, which blew up and became this" was bad enough. Even worse was the classic gaslighting of "There was no before the Big Bang, the question is meaningless. It's like saying what's North of the North Pole".

The illogic that people are expected to swallow is ridiculous! Of course there's something that is north of the North Pole - space. No doubt some form of space pre-existed the BB too. There is no other possibility despite the self-indulgence of those playing brain noodle games.

And what is space but diffuse energy? We life forms and objects are concentrated and ordered energy. Space is diffuse, less ordered energy. When you have energy swishing around, some areas become more dense and others more sparse. Sometimes the energy is so sparse or dense that there's a break of a physical threshold, and that results in emergence. The dance of Creation and destruction.

For all we know, the BB might have basically been the birth of a galaxy in a vastly larger universe. It's always hard to know what's going on from an inside perspective, or an outside perspective, for that matter :) That's why humans thrive. Some of us observe internals, some observe externals, and then they come together and argue about which perspective is more "real", more valid. In this way they come closer to reality.

Reconciling the subjective and objective seems as inherently impossible as reconciling quanta and relativistic matter, a knife-edge balance that is impossible to achieve, only approach.

[value]

A task of philosophy may be to explore passable roads in front of the tide.

Like a scout, pilot, or guide?

Like an intellectual pioneer.

Don't blame science. It is fundamentally bound by dogma. It would be philosophy that should have been there

[Lagayascienza]

The article at Universe Today didn't say much about the Big Bang other than to indicate the elements that are thought to have been produced in it - basically just the lightest elements - the first four on the periodic table. What was interesting about the article was the hight metallicity of the single distant galaxy they were able to study spectroscopically with the JWST. (It should be noted that when they are talking about metallicity they are talking about elements such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen which, although very lightweight, are heavier than the first four elements in the periodic table)

The researchers were unable to say "exactly where heavier elements such as carbon came from and suggested that they may be “… the heritage of the first generation of supernovae from Population III progenitors,”. They are not questioning the Big Bang theory, only our understanding of the evolution of the earliest generations of stars. However, at the distance of the galaxy they were looking at, they could not see individual stars, and they are working with a sample of one very distant galaxy as it was shortly after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. Many more early galaxies will need to be studied before any astrophysical conclusions can be drawn and before it can be said that early metallicity has any implications for our understanding of the Big Bang.

I don't think the question of what existed before the Big Bang is a meaningless question. But science is not yet able to go there. If the universe did indeed begin at the Big Bang, it is said to have expanded from a point of extreme temperature and density called the Big Bang singularity in which space and time have no meaning. If this is so, asking what happened before the Big Bang is indeed like asking what is north of the North Pole on a spherical 2D surface. The answer is nothing.

However, there are several problems with the Big bang model. It is possible that science will be unable to resolve these problems until it has a theory of quantum gravity. Until then, the current Big Bang theory is the best picture we have of the universe we see.

[value]

Perhaps one should consider the reconsideration of Kant winning the causality debate with Hume using his concept 'apodictical certainty' (apodiktische Gewißheit). What effect would that have on the idea that the Big Bang theory is plausible, especially in light of recent 'impossible' JWST discoveries?

"because causality, for Kant, is a central example of a category or pure concept of the understanding, his relationship to Hume on this topic is central to his philosophy as a whole. Moreover, because Hume’s famous discussion of causality and induction is equally central to his philosophy, understanding the relationship between the two philosophers on this issue is crucial for a proper understanding of modern philosophy more generally."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-hume-causality/

The Kant-Hume debate was central to Western philosophy more generally, but the reason why might be because Kant's apodictical certainty provided science with a moral dimension for progress, which in turn manifested in a fundamental inclination to defend the Big Bang theory against accumulating odds, because the Big Bang theory is fundamentally dependent on - and aligned with - causality.

My first impression when starting to read Kant is that he was 'serving the higher interest of science', which came across as the most ethical thing to do in the face of religious dogmatic ills of the time. However, what might actually have been the case is that Kant provided science with a moral dimension for progress.

Science's attempt to emancipate from philosophy paradoxically requires a type of philosophical certainty in its fundamental assumptions, and Kant gave that certainty to science by winning the Kant-Hume debate.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in Beyond Good and Evil (Chapter 6 – We Scholars) in 1886:

The declaration of independence of the scientific man, his emancipation from philosophy, is one of the subtler after-effects of democratic organization and disorganization: the self- glorification and self-conceitedness of the learned man is now everywhere in full bloom, and in its best springtime – which does not mean to imply that in this case self-praise smells sweet. Here also the instinct of the populace cries, “Freedom from all masters!” and after science has, with the happiest results, resisted theology, whose “hand-maid” it had been too long, science now proposes in its wantonness and indiscretion to lay down laws for philosophy, and in its turn to play the “master” – what am I saying! to play the PHILOSOPHER on its own account.

Therefore it might be of interest to reconsider the Kant-Hume debate on causality when it concerns a fundamental questioning of the validity of the Big Bang theory from a philosophical perspective. It might be the place where it all began, from a fundamental perspective, and where things can be turned around, from a cultural perspective...

[value]

Are we in a cosmic void?

I noticed dozens of science articles on the idea.

Earth would be in the middle of the void, and that void is not just equal but becomes 'more and more empty' towards the centre (towards Earth).

Earth at the center of a cosmic void
void-middle-1.jpg (167.07 KiB) Viewed 992 times

What do you think of the idea that the theory is catching publicity on major science magazines as the state of the art of Big Bang cosmology?

The cosmic void theory has been gaining momentum in recent months, with articles in prominent media being published in the past weeks. It came by again in Google's news feed two days ago.

We live in a cosmic void so empty that it breaks the laws of cosmology. [Read: This is why the Big Bang could still be right]
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg ... cosmology/

What is interesting is that the cosmic void theory is fundamentally dependent on dark energy and dark matter. I recently managed to use AI to conclude that dark energy and dark matter are fundamentally (philosophically) tied to 'cosmic structure' and that because of it, since it has not been measured yet, it should be perceived from the perspective of cosmic structure itself, i.e. a force of gravity in two directions, which equals the fundamental essence of life.

AI: Yes, it can be established that both dark matter and dark energy are not random and are directly tied to cosmic structures. ... Therefore, both dark matter and dark energy should be perceived from the point of view of cosmic structures, as they are directly tied to the formation and evolution of the structure of the universe.

An example cosmological observation:

(2023) Universe Defies Einstein’s Predictions: Cosmic Structure Growth Mysteriously Suppressed
Scientists have discovered that cosmic structures grow slower than Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity predicts, with dark energy (negative mass) playing a more dominant role than previously thought.

Galaxies are threaded throughout our universe like a giant cosmic spider web. Their distribution is not random and requires either dark energy or negative mass.
https://scitechdaily.com/universe-defie ... uppressed/

Not random = Qualitative. This is the area of philosophy, potentially a point at which, instead of crying about 'breaking cosmology', it is philosophy's job to take over.

As for a scientific lead:

A recent new theory (since 2018) intends to replace Dark Matter and Dark Energy with a single concept: Dark Fluid.

"some of the biggest mysteries in cosmology require either negative mass or 'dark energy' to explain it"

The negative-mass cosmology proposed by Farnes 2018 (NASA) replaces both dark matter and dark energy with one single ingredient, namely the negative-mass fluid. The idea is that negative mass would create a repulsive form of gravity that would counteract the attractive force of normal matter, leading to the observed accelerating expansion of the universe.

(2018) Can a negative-mass cosmology explain dark matter and dark energy?⋆
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_ ... 17-19.html
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.08287.pdf

Farnes 2018: https://github.com/jamiefarnes/negative-mass-simulator

The concept negative gravity (in the dark fluid theory) would break Einstein's theory of relativity. This would make it interesting for philosophical speculation since a whole lot may be learned from it.

A potential source of this 'negative mass' is the neutrino particle, also known as "Ghost Particle", that can change its mass influence up to 3000x in size 'from within itself', which is philosophical evidence that that change potential must be Qualitative of nature.

As for philosophy backing off from this area of cosmological exploration:

Only a fool doesn't believe in science.
...
Like I said, the matter needs to be left up to those with the technical knowledge.
...
I don't think it is philosophy's job to investigate science's claims.

My reply:

But what if it concerns a mass influence change potential that must be contained within a particle that might be fundamental to the existence of the Universe? Would it be responsible to 'leave it to empirical science'? How can science even consider the concept Quality other than through human psychology?

When neutrinos are the source of mass and Gravity, and when the source of their gravitational influence must be contained within the neutrino and when that would include the potential to change that mass influence, it would imply that, if there would be the slightest Quality involved in that changing mass/Gravity influence, it would manifest as both positive and negative Gravity.

[pavsic]

It seems that in astrophysics we are encountering increasingly more perplexing puzzles. I think that they could be related to the interpretation of the observed redshifts. In some of my old papers I explored an extension of conformal relativity based on the idea of active dilatations. In such theory, objects can have different scales in the sense that the constituent atoms of one object have different sizes than the same type constituent atoms of another objects. The spectra of the light emitted from such objects are shifted by the corresponding scale factor. We would observe that their spectra have different redshifts or blueshifts. This provides another possible interpretation of the observed redshifts in astrophysics, besides the usual interpretation. Namely, redshifts can be due either to different velocities or to different scales of the observed objects. This provides a possible starting point for resolution of the problems encountered in astrophysics and cosmology.

[Lagayascienza]

Is there some theoretical or empirical problem with redshift that your proposal would solve? And how could an atom of, say, hydrogen be a different size here to what it is anywhere else? For one thing, the fundamental forces binding atoms would have to be different. But how would that work? If you want to make a hydrogen atom smaller, then where are you going to pack all the various subatomic bits and pieces?

[pavsic]

In cosmology, redshifts are interpreted as indicating objects' velocities. If scale is a degree of freedom, analogous to object's overall position), then everything in a scaled object is scaled, so that the scaled object is similar to the "original" object. An active translation transforms an object so that after the translation it remains identical to the original object (e.g., the identical table, star or whatever,...), only its overall position is changed. Analogously, an active dilatation transforms an object so that it remains in all respects identical to the original object, only its overall scale is changed. This includes the change of all the constituents, atoms, nuclei, quarks and the forces among those constituents. Emission lines are shifted by the scale factor. The idea is that the objects considered in astrophysics and cosmology can move not only translationally, but also dilatationally. Redshifts are then due not only to translational motion, but also to dilatational motion. The problems such as the "Hubble tension" (the values of the Hubble constant obtained from the measurements based on the cosmic microwave background differ from those made in the local universe (using supernovae or other "standard candles") and the crisis in cosmology regarding age and size of certain galaxies, could possibly be resolved by models that would include the assumed dilatational motion.