WHY IS THERE ANYTHING AT ALL? - Handout #2 mgmign2@verizon.

net Continuing some of the questions we would like to be able to answer: 3) What does before mean if there is only nothingness? Did time come into being along with our universe, or did time pre-exist the universe? What, in fact, is time and why do we experience time as we do? 4) What does it mean to be. Being is not a predicate. We understand what we mean by The apple is red, but what do we understand by The apple is? Aristotle required matter and form, the matter providing the substantive foundation and the forms providing the predicates 5) Is the universe at time t the same universe as at time t+1? How is this continuity explained? 6) Am I the same person at time t+1 that I was at time t? How is this continuity explained? 7) Can I uncreate the universe into nothingness if every object in the universe only has contingent being? Am I allowed to violate conservation laws in this process? Does this argue for the existence of nothingness. What properties does nothingness have? 8) What role do I play in creating the universe. Will we investigate the role of the observer in quantum theory? 9) Why can I remember the past but not the future? Physical laws are deterministic and have no direction of time. Somehow we must explain the arrow of time and what implications this may have for the creation of the universe. There are three concepts that we must explore in greater depth to make sense of some of these questions: time, space, and cause. These are three concepts that the philosophy Kant believed were fundamental categories that the mind uses to think about the world. They are fundamental in science as well because almost all theories of physics involve time and space, and, as I remarked earlier, sciences assumes that events can be explained and that theories can make sense of the observable universe. Newtonian absolute space and time - space is Euclidean and infinite and time is infinite. Moreover, in Newtonian, as in almost all physical theories, time is reversible; that is, it makes as much sense for time to backward as it does to go forward. Newton, of course, believed that this is the way God created the universe and it needed no other explanation. Explain reference frames. Classical relativity. In a Newtonian universe time is the same for everyone, everywhere, clocks can be synchronized, simultaneity makes sense, action at a distance occurs with respect to basic forces like gravity. An efficient cause of an event must precede it in time. A scientific explanation must involve some sort of physical cause. But any physical cause is part of what must be explained. If there is to be a physical cause, we must start with something, not

nothing. Therefore no scientific theory can bridge the gap between something and nothing. The question is not a scientific one but a metaphysical one. Enter special relativity - Classical relativity plus the assumption that the speed of light is independent of the observer. Space and time are no longer absolute, and time and space are no longer independent. The universe now has a structure called space-time. An event in space-time can only be influenced by previous events in its light cone and can only influence future events in its light cone. An event A may seem to occur before an event B in one frame of reference. But A may be seen to occur after B in another frame of reference. An event X might be the cause of Y if X occurs prior to Y in every frame of reference. Action at a distance is no longer possible. General relativity - special relativity plus the structure of space-time must satisfy ten tensor equations. A number of different geometric structures are consistent with general relativity, including some in which travel into the past is possible. Our universe does not seem to have such a structure. But even though wormholes might be possible, they would be so small and fragile that travel through them would be essentially impossible and you would not know where you would wind up anyway. Dont even think about traveling into a black hole. There are more theories of how the universe is structured. We may talk some about them later if there is time. We will begin a discussion of time: Everyone has a concept of time, but we try to explain what it is we get into trouble. How fast does time fly? A second per second. Time is a dimension of our universe. To specific when I last had dinner out, I need to specify space dimensions (where), and a time dimension ((when). But we think of space as fixed and time as flowing. Time has a past, present, and future, and the past and future are infinite in extent. We sense an arrow of time going from our past to our future, but scientific theories do not have an arrow of time. We could just as easily go back in time as forward in time, but we always seem to be going into the future, not into the past. This is because of the arrow of time. But the arrow of time must be a property of the universe, not inherent in a particular theory. In order to get a handle on time we need some way to measure it. There are a number of events that occur on a periodic basis that can be used to mark the passage of time: the human pulse, the cycles of the moon, the rising and setting of the sun. Some are more regular than others, but if we had no regularly periodic events, we could not measure time. Example of time measured by emissions of a radioactive substance: random and unpredictable