[The original version of this essay was published at The Christian in the Universe of Einstein: 5. The Einsteinian Universe. It was finished and uploaded on 2007/02/24. This version includes some changes made for the approaching publication of a collection of most of my weblog entries over the past 5+ years.]
Einstein gave a great gift to rational thinkers, Christian and non-Christian. He gave us a universe, that is, a coherent definition of a universe. And the definition is proving to be quite a bit different from the traditional metaphysical definitions. In fact, the simplest way to think of Einsteinian Universes as a class is to think in terms of the gravitational field. That which can be found in the same gravitational field as the earth is part of the same universe as the earth.
The usual definitions for universe involve all created being or even all created and divine being. Some nowadays think in terms of causal relatedness, but there remains a good possibility that parts of the universe which emerged from the so-called Big Bang are not causally related to other parts. This would mean they are no longer causally related even so far as gravity goes but, by definition, all parts of the universe — this phase of Creation — would have been bound together; else they would be parts of different phases of Creation.
Clearly, I’m stretching language to the breaking point, but speculative thought can do that. Or, in Nietzsche’s terms: speculative thought can involve dangerous balancing acts on a high-wire. Again, in Melville’s terms, one who would find truth must leave the safe harbors and head out into the open seas, willing to brave the storms and the insanity induced by the inhuman vastness.
In any case, the known facts about the so-called Big Bang imply strongly we’re in a specific phase of Creation and we can’t do more than speculate on the form of general being from which this realm of galaxies and spiders expanded nor can we do more than speculate on the other forms of particular being into which that general being can be shaped. But we do know that gravity plays a unique role in this universe: unifying. It would seem true almost by definition that this highly particularized phase of Creation is defined in terms of gravity.
At this point, it would become important to know what gravity really is and it may seem strange but modern physicists admit to not knowing what it is. Is it a force in the same sense as electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces? If so, could it be merely a particularized version of an abstract being which is the foundational stuff of all matter and all forms of energy and fields? In terms I proposed in my book, To See a World in a Grain of Sand, is it possible that gravity emerged from the Primordial Universe in the same way, and the same sense, as other forms of physical being? In those same terms — No.
In my worldview, gravity is a particularized version of a general metaphysical principle of unity while there is no such simple principle which seems to apply to the other forces of this universe. In some sense, gravity pre-existed this universe, this phase of Creation. I might well be wrong, but my story, that is — my explanation of reality, is consistent and coherent and presents this universe as being complete in some meaningful sense. This universe isn’t complete in the sense of being all of Creation but it’s complete in itself as a story. In theological terms, it will achieve the purposes for which God created it.
The reader who’s read more of my entries, or my book, will be realizing that I’m serious about God creating truths in the very same act in which He created the stuff from which this universe, and the universe of the resurrected, are shaped. What I call the Primordial Universe is the mysterious stuff on the other side of the so-called Big Bang, the stuff that the thing-like stuff of this universe melts down into if we follow the development back in time and then speculate on a continuation of those processes.
Thing-like being developed as some strange stuff began to expand from the event first labeled the Big Bang by Fred Hoyle who wished to ridicule the model. Time and space as we know them also began during that process of expansion which was also a process of shaping. Yet, I should perhaps be a little more cautious. It remains still possible — though a bit unfashionable the last I knew — to speculate that the Big Bang was a rebound from a Small Slam and that the universe is in a state of oscillation though perhaps it can only collapse and expand a small number of times. Yet, this wouldn’t change the principle I’m expressing that the spacetime of this universe is part of this universe not a framework built from absolute truths.
The very nature of the Einsteinian Universe, as the largest possible gravitationally bound system of which we are part, tells us that it doesn’t necessarily include everything. And we can’t even necessarily see or otherwise interact with all of that gravitationally bound system. The journey backwards in time towards the beginning of this expansionary and factually-shaped universe points to greater and more general possibilities once the adventurer asks himself the question: What lies on the other side of the so-called Big Bang?
But let me state the matter in opposition to the five points I raised in The Cosmos of Thinkers Prior to Einstein.
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As I already discussed above, this universe is a highly particularized phase of Creation and not all of Creation.
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The universe seems to be homogeneous. From the viewpoint of a physicist, the stuff in far-away galaxies is the same stuff as here on Earth, the physical laws in far-away galaxies are the same laws as here on Earth. This would be true even if some physical laws or constants have developed over time because physics as we know it would have to assume that the same meta-laws of development apply over the entirety of the universe. Or else, it would likely be the end of science as we know it. Regularity is the key to science, that is systematic investigation and thought. It doesn’t matter — in principle — how many levels of parameters there are in the laws which express that regularity, although meta-laws would add immensely to the difficulty of exploring and understanding the universe.
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Time and space seem to be dimensions in a highly particularized universe, arbitrary in both the details of their interrelationships and also — maybe — their very existence. The geometries which are used in theoretical physics are varied and there is no one geometry or other branch of mathematics that suffices for all work in that field. Kant and others, perhaps even Newton to some extent, were wrong in assuming that our world is necessarily a three dimensional Euclidean place moving through an absolute and uniform time. Some speculative work in physics and some modern work in the philosophy of science point to the same claim I’ve made that time and space are creatures — as St. Paul simply assumed. We don’t know what being is like on ‘other side’ of the Big Bang.
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‘Matter’ is not inert and not a pure object which is independent from minds or souls as they exist in this universe. Matter seems to be a partially frozen form of some sort of strange being which we can somewhat see, in a speculative way, by following the development of this universe back to that beginning of its expansion, the so-called Big Bang. Matter heats up as we go back in time in our imaginary journey, different sorts of basic particles beginning to melt into each other. Different forms of energy and fields also seem to melt into each other. In my book, To See a World in a Grain of Sand, I speculated that matter, energy, and fields all melt down into some strange sort of being which doesn’t exist in any space or time as we understand space and time. In fact, in cosmological physics, that sort of extreme temperature and extreme compression are different terms for the same states. Soul-like and mind-like aspects of the human being are aspects of a dynamic form of being — partially frozen that creatures like us could exist.
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The Creator of this sort of a universe would have to lie beyond or above or outside time and space and — in my opinion — could not have substance as the ground of His being. I’ve adopted the Thomistic existentialist view that God is a pure Act-of-being, His own Act-of-being, the Supreme Act-of-being. For reasons I won’t go into here, St. Thomas compromised his existentialism by considering the possibility that some types of substance, soul-stuff, could be subsistent — that is, it could continue to exist indefinitely once God had brought it into being. I’m more consistent in claiming that all creaturely being, all substance exists on an ongoing basis only as a result of acts-of-being which are only possible to God Himself. A Christian view of Einstein’s and Bohr’s debate on the meaning of reality, I went even beyond this to speculate that relationships, inside of Creation as well as from God to Creation, are primary. Rather than saying that things exist and then have relationships, I am willing to follow radical quantum theorists, such as Niels Bohr, in claiming that — at some very basic level, relationships bring substance into existence. More than that, relationships continue to shape substances in very deep ways so that a human being does become one of many possible entities depending upon his relationships to God, to other human beings, to his physical environments.
I’ve stated that my views are highly speculative but this is necessarily so. Neither facts nor theories can cohere by themselves. Speculative thought is the glue — obviously, ‘grand’ theories, such as the Theory of General Relativity, have important speculative components.
Without speculations, ultimately grand speculations on the meaning of all Creation, our knowledge remains fragmented. We can easily return to a state of intellectual barbarism without responsible worldviewing, and I know of few modern thinkers who are attempting to do what was done by Plato and Aristotle, Philo and Augustine, Aquinas and Kant. The problem is particularly noticeable in Christian thought where few have realized that, as Pope Benedict told us in his first encyclical, the teachings of the Church are made up of both revealed truths and speculations. Right now, the Church is teaching a body of thought which — in its entirety — makes no sense in light of modern empirical knowledge. Catholic and Protestant theologians and philosophers are all obscuring those revealed truths which they should be illuminating by honestly dealing with knowledge of this phase of God’s Creation.