Origin of the universe. A topic still not fully understood in science today. There have been many theories about where everything has come from, but virtually everyone agrees upon some sort of variation of the "Big Bang." I going to list the most popular versions of said theory, and I ask of you; which one do you see as most reasonable? List your reasons for your beliefs and how you came to your conclusions. If you have a different thought, or have a different theory that you see as reasonable not listed about how the everything came to be, tell us, and give us your reasons.

1.) "String Theory," also know as "M Theory," and sometimes arrogantly called "The Theory of Everything."

The essential idea behind string theory is this: all of the different 'fundamental ' particles of the Standard Model are really just different manifestations of one basic object: a string. How can that be? Well, we would ordinarily picture an electron, for instance, as a point with no internal structure. A point cannot do anything but move. But, if string theory is correct, then under an extremely powerful 'microscope' we would realize that the electron is not really a point, but a tiny loop of string. A string can do something aside from moving--- it can oscillate in different ways. If it oscillates a certain way, then from a distance, unable to tell it is really a string, we see an electron. But if it oscillates some other way, well, then we call it a photon, or a quark, or a ... you get the idea. So, if string theory is correct, the entire world is made of strings!

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about string theory is that such a simple idea works--- it is possible to derive (an extension of) the Standard Model (which has been verified experimentally with incredible precision) from a theory of strings. But it should also be said that, to date, there is no direct experimental evidence that string theory itself is the correct description of Nature. This is mostly due to the fact that string theory is still under development. We know bits and pieces of it, but we do not yet see the whole picture, and we are therefore unable to make definite predictions. In recent years many exciting developments have taken place, radically improving our understanding of what the theory is.

Here is the current formula for the theory.

And a video explanation for the lazy ones out there.

2.) The Cyclic Model.

A cyclic model is any of several cosmological models in which the universe follows infinite, self-sustaining cycles. For example, the oscillating universe theory briefly considered by Albert Einstein in 1930 theorized a universe following an eternal series of oscillations, each beginning with a big bang and ending with a big crunch; in the interim, the universe would expand for a period of time before the gravitational attraction of matter causes it to collapse back in and undergo a bounce.

The Cyclic Universe model does not replace the Big Bang theory but offers a potential alternative to certain aspects of the Big Bang that are longstanding problems. Some scientists are excited about its potential while others are cautious or skeptical. The Cyclic Universe model incorporates concepts from standard physics, string theory, and M-theory.

Premises of the theory include:
•
space and time exist forever

•
the big bang is not the beginning of time; rather, it is a bridge to a pre-existing contracting era

•
the Universe undergoes an endless sequence of cycles in which it contracts in a big crunch and re-emerges in an expanding big bang, with trillions of years of evolution in between

•
the temperature and density of the universe do not become infinite at any point in the cycle; indeed, they never exceed a finite bound (about a trillion trillion degrees)

•
no inflation has taken place since the big bang; the current homogeneity and flatness were created by events that occurred before the most recent big bang

•
the seeds for galaxy formation were created by instabilities arising as the Universe was collapsing towards a big crunch, prior to our big bang

Another video for the lazy ones.

3.) Unmoved Mover

The unmoved mover or prime mover (primum movens) is a philosophical concept described by Aristotle as a primary cause or "mover" of all the motion in the universe. As is implicit in the name, the "unmoved mover" moves other things, but is not itself moved by any prior action. In Book 12 of his Metaphysics, Aristotle describes the unmoved mover as being perfectly beautiful, indivisible, and contemplating only the perfect contemplation: itself contemplating. He equates this concept also with the Active Intellect. This Aristotelian concept had its roots in cosmological speculations of the earliest Greek "Pre-Socratic" philosophers and became highly influential and widely drawn upon in medieval philosophy and theology. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, elaborated on the Unmoved Mover in the quinque viae.

Today we know this version of genesis as the "Cosmological Argument". The cosmological argument is an argument for the existence of a First Cause (or instead, an Uncaused cause) to the universe, and by extension is often used as an argument for the existence of an "unconditioned" or "supreme" being, usually then identified as God. It is traditionally known as an argument from universal causation, an argument from first cause, the causal argument or the argument from existence. Whichever term is employed, there are three basic variants of the argument, each with subtle yet important distinctions: the arguments from in causa (causality), in esse (essentially), in fieri (becoming), and the argument from contingency.

The basic premise of all of these is that something caused or continuously causes the Universe to exist, and this First Cause is what we call God. It has been used by various theologians and philosophers over the centuries, from the ancient Greeks Plato and Aristotle to the medievals (e.g., St. Thomas Aquinas) and beyond. It is also applied by the Spiritist doctrine as the main argument for the existence of God.

Sorry no video for the lazy ones, but a brief summary of this one is; God did it.

2102090

your simple description of the string theory is remarkable, as I haven't done science in eons. It was really instructive.

In my opinion I would tend to consider the string theory, but my question is how does it stacks up with quantum theory. Because I heard of the principle that

"We can measure its movement but not localise it, we can localise it but not measure its movement," when talking about a particle. Or with the string it seems that to prove the theory we need to find out the location and the movement. Which seems contradictory.

Any explanation?

2102090
None of these. I try not to "believe" in things in general, especially not just to have an answer. I don't know what the origin or explanation of the universe is, and in this current era of this particular civilization, neither does anyone else. But some answers are better than others. Some aren't really answers at all.

There are lots of other options besides these (Loop Quantum Gravity, Twistor Theory, Quantum Dynamical Triangulation, Retrocausal/Eternal Inflation etc.), and I wouldn't wager on any of them, but personally I think a timeless block universe of all possible states, with the laws of physics being "necessary" like the values of various purely mathematical constants (to answer Einstien's question, "no, God did not have a choice in creating the universe"), is the most purely aesthetically pleasing.

There's also this, which I think is beautiful and hope is true, but of course we don't know:

2102090

If I had to choose one, I would go with String Theory. But as a Catholic, I also go with the third one as well. I don't know which one to choose...

2102090
String theory. I've been interested in it since I was six, and it seems the most likely.

I'm somehow between the string theory and that cyclic thing. With everything being the same except of being the same, cycles can develop under the frequency with which the strings oscillate. So, somehow, in my brain the string theory is just more detailed than the cyclic model, being its base without battling mayor points. There may be minor things where they interfere each other and in those cases I tend to the string theory.

The unmoved mover, however, is nothing my brains takes gratefully.

2102090
There are many, many different answers to this question out there, as you have shown, but there is only one right answer at the moment: We don't know.

We don't know precisely how the universe came to be, but that is why we have scientists who are continuing to work on theories like the three above (though the third is nonsensical due to its baseless assumptions) to explain how all this came to be. Which one do I believe? Well, it's not a matter of belief for me, I haven't studied String Theory or the Cyclic Model all that much, and I can't just pick the coolest one to choose to believe in. I'll believe the answer when it comes, in all it's scientific glory. Though neither I nor you may live to see that day that happens (thought I sure as hell hope so ).

2102140 First, it should be noted that String Theory, despite its acceptance in theoretical physics today, is still very early in its conception. As is shown/explained, a lot better than I could, in this video.

Second, it has proven difficult to construct quantum models of gravity, the remaining fundamental force. Semi-classical approximations are workable, and have led to predictions such as Hawking radiation. However, the formulation of a complete theory of quantum gravity is hindered by apparent incompatibilities between general relativity (the most accurate theory of gravity currently known) and some of the fundamental assumptions of quantum theory. The resolution of these incompatibilities is an area of active research, and theories such as string theory are among the possible candidates for a future theory of quantum gravity.

Furthermore, a physist (I admit, I am not one, just a lover of science) would probably argue that the particles and strings, while showing similar attributes to each other, are two different things. However, I could easily see your point being a completely valid point based on what we know to be true of quantum mechanics.

My overall thoughts are; physicists have there work cut out for them.

2102090
I don't believe any of them. Science isn't in the business of belief. "I don't know," is an acceptable answer to the 'big' questions. I'll address all three of your possibilities.

1. As you mentioned, string theory has yet to predict experimental results that aren't also predicted by the standard model. Until it does, it remains an untested hypothesis.
2. As of right now, we don't have the tools to prove experimentally whether the universe is cyclic or not. It's certainly an interesting thought, but that's all it is.
3. (I'm probably gonna get some flak for this one) The way I understand it, the idea of a 'Prime Mover' is a philosophical cop-out to an infinite regression of the question, "Who created the creator?" In other words, it relies solely on one's personal belief.

2102158 I assume by "believe" you mean like the 'big questions.' You have belief, you would just like those beliefs based on preexisting instances. This definition goes back to the original definition of faith, which comes from the Latin word 'fides', which defined is: the belief in something where trust is found (evidence).

An example of this would be your car starting in the morning to get you to work, you cannot know that it will start every time, but based on it starting previously for the last six months you can make a justifiable claim that it will start the next morning. If you didn't believe that it would start then you wouldn't even attempt to try and start it the next day. Another example would be the sun rising; based on the sun's consistency to rise for everyday of your life, you can make a justifiable claim that it will rise tomorrow. However, just because you have found previous data showing its consistency doesn't remove the possibility of it being gone to tomorrow by some cataclysmic cosmological disaster.

You said "try not to believe", but believe it or not (bad dum tss) you actually believe in a lot more things than you realize, even as little as they may be.

2102212 Well, if it makes you feel any better, the multiverse which is a part of string theory still suffers from the undying question; where the heck did they all come from?

It may explain where our universe comes from, but where the heck did all those other universes come from?

2102483 Personally, I don't think we'll ever have that "eureka" moment where everything is explained by the completely tangible evidence that no one can deny. I can hope that we find it to, but they aren't that high. Maybe a fraction above sea level.

2103155
And I'm fairly certain that there were people who said the same thing about traveling to space, and yet there we are. I trust that we'll have the answer, or at least be almost certain of an answer eventually, though that's just me. Perhaps we'll never discover how it actually formed.

Edit: Le double post.

2103230 It's definitely possible, I wouldn't argue that.

2103155
That's called "confidence." I have good explanations for how things work, such as why cars start and why the sun continues to (appear to) rise, but I don't think they're true merely because they happen a lot. All of these explanations mutually reinforce each other, and every time I rely on them to plan my actions I'm testing them once again, but given that they haven't failed so far, I feel confident in using them as the basis for conjecture to create further explanations to test, that they will in turn mutually support if they don't turn out to be immediately wrong. If the car doesn't start or the sun doesn't rise, then I would have to find explanations for why that is the case (faulty battery; overcast day), but I wouldn't suddenly "believe" otherwise, because these things aren't individual, isolated opinions but part of an explanatory mental model of the world that I fully acknowledge to be provisional.

Sorry, this is just a pet peeve of mine - Those people you've read who try to score points by calling something like that belief are blowing smoke. It's only "belief" in the most banal, hollow sense of the word, and not what people mean when they use that word in ordinary conversation about these kinds of topics. "Conjecture" or "anticipation of a the next part of a pattern" are simply not the same thing.
There isn't anything I only believe because I want it to be true, or without good (i.e. predictive and hard-to-vary) explanations that haven't yet been disproved, with a level of confidence proportional to how many other reliable explanations it's connected to, that would have to change if it were wrong.

2103423

noun: confidence
1. The feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something; firm trust.

Ex: "We had every confidence in the staff."
synonyms: trust, belief, faith, credence, conviction

I rest my case.

2103155

I ask that question myself every time I think of the multiverse theory.

2103503
Again, that's the completely banal, everyday meaning of "working assumption." This is a dictionary for English usage, not actual conceptual arguments. This is why analytic philosophy is necessary in the first place - It doesn't matter what the dictionary says, because each of those words has different semantic associations that need to be unpacked, and the different senses in which a word is used need to be avoided.

But this is totally a quibbling semantic argument and we're getting off track.

2103540 Agreed.

Cake or Pie?

2103516
I don't really see the issue - They would all have the same origin in the meta-laws that govern the hyperdimensional space in which they exist, and which churns them out according to its own overarching structure, or through pure randomness, which doesn't really need an explanation. If you find a box of nails and hold one up, you wouldn't say "Well, OK, this one came from the nail factory, but where did all these other nails in the box come from!?"
It does push the explanation back a level (whence the nail factory?), but what we've got out of string theory is less a description of that hyperspace ("The Landscape," it's called) than a set of rules for describing how universes can be. There's no real hint of an origin that would need explaining, since it's more like a continuing, generative process or like a catalog of all the different combinations of options than a physical space (though why it's that particular process would need to be explained, unless it turned out to be the only one that didn't contradict itself in some way).

The problem I have is that no one really knows how these most fundamental properties of the universe we find are implemented. A multiverse is a genuine prediction of several theories, and people employ it to explain why certain constants of nature appear so maddeningly arbitrary (we're necessarily in one so constructed that it can have people in it), but we don't really have a conception of where those constants inhere.
I don't think we'll make much progress until we can say what it is that gives them their seemingly arbitrary "substance" in the first place, the way thermodynamics is a consequence of combinatorial mathematics and the inverse square law is a consequence of 3D geometry plus conservation of energy. If these fundamental properties of a universe are determined randomly when it's created, what is it exactly about that universe that actually posesses that property?

2103600
Cake, man! Some nice sponge or angel food cake with vanilla frosting. Pie usually has some kind of goo inside and I'm not a big fan of goo. I always have to ask when someone offers a pastry if it's pastry all the way through and won't, y'know, spring some kinda ooze on me.

2102090
I don't really "believe" in any of of them per se, for reasons outlined by others, but I am partial to M-theory and Eternal inflation right now at least. All of these have their merits of course, except for the unmoved mover, which is much more of a philosophical concept than true theory.
2103516
There are many theories that involve multiverses.

I believe we will never know, and that's the way it should stay.
If we find out everything too quickly we'll become like the humans in Wall-E.
Megatron out.

2106870

If we find out everything too quickly we'll become like the humans in Wall-E.

That's one way to think about it, but I have another movie in mind:

2107169
Sorry, I don't know that one.

2107758
*Actual gasp*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film)

2106870
Why? Why should we limit our knowledge?

If we find out everything too quickly we'll become like the humans in Wall-E.

How exactly did you come to this conclusion? Similarly, why do you think we will never know?

2107958

Why should we limit our knowledge?

Because Science is something to be marvelled at, because there is so much we do not know, it must be paced out.
If The big questions are answered too quickly, Science loses its charm and......its...marvel-ness?
But that's just my opinion, and just like most things science will never have an absolute answer to them

2113817
Uhh, no. We will never run short of things to learn. For every question answered, two more (at least) arise. The only reasonable limits for science are those that ensure it is conducted in an ethical and safe manner. There is no other reason to limit or hold back the expansion of knowledge.

"My goodness! The universe is bigger and more beautiful than even our greatest prophets said! Praise [insert preferred deity here]!"
- said no religious leader, ever

2114068
And that's your opinion.
Lord Megatron over and out.

2114403
And my opinion is that to stop learning "just because" is utterly stupid. Science can be about wonder, but it's mostly about learning, and building on past knowledge.

2113817 1) String theory is probably true, but I also believe 3) is true - or, at the very least, should be assumed to be true.

I agree somewhat with Lord Megatron (blasphemy!) in that scientific explanations do turn the wondrous into the mundane. Now this isn't a reason to not do more science, since knowledge by is intrinsically valuable, but I think we ought to keep in mind the effects of science on human behavior.

In a way, the unimaginable power of science tends to engender the belief that no problem in the world cannot be fixed by science and human rationality. We see this in disease control: every illness has a scientific solution, and so we just heap antibiotic after antibiotic on everything until we now have antibiotic-resistant MRSAs, overdiagnosed patients and so on. I'm not saying we should revert to sacrificing to the pagan gods, but maybe if we understood that some things are just meant to happen, then perhaps we'd have a better chance at co-existing with the world around us.

This is not even mentioning the frequently-disastrous outcomes of trying to apply "scientific" methods to human governance, most notably with regards to economics and Communism.

Again, not to say that science shouldn't be pursued, but at the same time, we should realize that science gives us the facts about the world, not rules on how to live our lives.

2118399

I agree somewhat with Lord Megatron (blasphemy!) in that scientific explanations do turn the wondrous into the mundane.

OK, I really can't let this stand. I actually AM a professional visual artist, and... Well, I'll let Richard Feynman explain it:

While the Buddha said "Before you are enlightened, a flower is just a flower - While you are learning, a flower becomes more than just a flower - And when you are enlightened, a flower is once again just a flower," (which I take again as a metaphor for understanding the abstract principles of nature as a whole) studying science has enriched my life and my appreciation of beauty beyond even my current comprehension. Understanding never diminishes anything; all it does is show how your previous form of appreciation of something was incomplete and poorer than what it could have been.

We see this in disease control: every illness has a scientific solution, and so we just heap antibiotic after antibiotic on everything until we now have antibiotic-resistant MRSAs, overdiagnosed patients and so on.

This is a total mistake. People make it so often in thinking that the present is actually some kind of culmination or "real" time in the overall span of history. Life expectancy has continued to increase, and infectious disease has reared up again as a threat, it has completely fallen off the chart for major causes of death not just in the industrialized world, but worldwide. It's a blip, as we learn more about microorganisms and evolve (yes, evolve) a new way to counter their own evolution. There's no such thing as an unproblematic state of affairs; all we'll every be able to do is come up with solutions and then solve the smaller problems they create, like antibiotic resitance.

maybe if we understood that some things are just meant to happen...

Our own actions are determined by the physical processes in our brains; they're as "meant to happen" as anything else in the universe. We're no different from the rest of it, but...

...then perhaps we'd have a better chance at co-existing with the world around us.

No one has ever done this. 99.9% of all the species that have ever lived on this planet are extinct. It doesn't work. It's not even possible - Natural balance is based on homeostasis, not the complementarianism so many humans naively think it is, which is odd, considering both they and their cultures are products of nature itself.
It's like the tension between fusion and gravity inside the sun: Nature is only seeking points of balance, and as it explores the conceptual space of its endless possibilities, you have to either develop the strength to hold up, or the agility to dodge its endless wheels-within-wheels or they'll grind you into the dust under the feet of the next iteration of beings it brings forth in its insatiable effort to Try All The Things. There have been many mass extinctions in the history of Earth - Nature sentences to death all those who won't change it (plants, and maybe now us) or mirror its own endless changes (Our ancestors).

2102090
I wanted to say stuff about this earlier, but now I'm finally getting around to it because I've finished a bunch of other work. I wanted to point out that the "First Cause" argument, stated so broadly, isn't really any different from Mathematical Platonism, or pretty much any other kind of non-physicalist ontology, which is still perfectly compatible with naturalism, so I don't think "god did it" is actually an appropriate summary. Also:

...contemplating only the perfect contemplation: itself contemplating.

What do you think this is, right now?

2154730 Hmm, what you say certainly broadened my view on certain points (I'm at work, so I didn't read the Richard Feynman video, sorry! ) And I'd like to say again that I'm not against science/knowing/research at all, just that we should realize there are limits to what it can tell us.

I think I might have phrased myself badly. Knowing the science that happens behind the phenomena doesn't make it any less beautiful, I agree with that. The "mundane" bit refers more to the mastery over the elements that science gives us a handle over.

When humans were still tramping around in the mud a river was an uncontrollable object (in some cultures, even a God) that flooded every now and then, and you just had to live with that. Now with science we largely understand the mechanics behind river flows and thus we can harness them for our ends, inadvertently causing irreparable ecological damage in most cases that might well bite us not too far in the future (Aswan Dam). That's what I meant by "wondrous" and "mundane".

Yep, nature is constantly in flux and microorganisms do evolve. I'm getting the vibe here that you see science as part of nature: we evolve through science and bacteria evolve to catch up, and so on for the others. I agree with that to a point. Bacteria was perhaps a bad example to use, since they adapt rapidly like nobody's business. But the same can't be said for a lot of fish or animals. OK, so maybe we - as humans - can adapt to this problem by generating new methods of farming, etc. That is certainly happening right now. But so are we going to sacrifice every other thing on Earth to our scientific prowess? Doing so would seem to put science and knowledge as the only intrinsic good out there, which I can't really accept.

Alright, in your view Nature and Man are locked in a battle for homeostasis. I don't agree wholly with that - I can't see how physical Nature evolves beyond smiting us with typhoons and earthquakes, and as you pointed out our ability to counter diseases is ever increasing (it's probably not a blip I think) - but let's roll with it.

At the most self-preserving level, wanton use of science without adequate realization of our consequences sends us to death, what with global warming and aquifer depletion and whatnot. On a meta-level, I can't accept that all the havoc we are wreaking can be justified in the name of "getting ahead of Nature". As mentioned earlier, I believe that we are already miles ahead of Nature beyond any reasonable doubt - no Malthusian catastrophe has happened in spite of our exponentially growing numbers, and science will no doubt provide answers to whatever problem we come across (though probably with increasingly unpalatable results) - but in any case, we seem to be assuming that humans are no better than animals, whose only real desire is to get ahead of the game in as many ways as possible. Humans are undeniably conscious beings, with the ability to choose for themselves - we have the option (and the power, I believe) to do otherwise as an animal does, to actually surmount basic natures and again realize that perhaps winning in everything is probably not the best way of going about things.

Sorry for the long diatribe ; I really did appreciate what you said. I apologize for any inclarities in my posts.

My thread... It's alive!

2154730 Anyway... Yes, I did state the 'first cause' very broadly, I admit to this. However, I only did this because 1) I was lazy 2) I didn't think it would that big of a deal. People tend to stay away from that argument because it has religious implications. 'First cause? What are you; Al qaeda?' Nonetheless I tried to give it some sort of defense being that I gave the same courtesy to the other two.

When explained in greater one can see the 'first cause' argument is not like platonism and cannot be explained by Naturalism. 'Platonism' refers to the philosophy that affirms the existence of abstract objects, which are asserted to "exist" in a "third realm, or dimension, distinct both from the sensible external world and from the internal world of consciousness. Platonism immediately falls flat on its face, by definition. When something is abstract, does it exist? Physically, it does not, it only exists as an idea lacking in concrete attributes. Of course, given the definition just shown, it's easy to say that an 'unmoved mover' may fall under this same category. While I would say that proving a "concrete" existence for it may be nigh impossible, it would also be impossible to say that an abstract thing (i.e. numbers) can actually create anything. It must have some sort of existence that it not limited to our universe, which is restricted by time, space, and matter; an existence beyond the natural.

This is where we see the difference in naturalism. Naturalism is the idea or belief that only natural (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the world; the idea or belief that nothing exists beyond the natural world. Obviously, the 'Unmoved Mover' finds itself at odds with this.

Differences in Platonism:
1) Cause is not abstract, but exists beyond physical limitations
2a) Cause is personal, it made a decision to create something (The universe).
2b) Abstract thoughts are impersonal, numbers explain how things work, but don't create anything.

Differences in Naturalism:
1) Unmoved Mover is beyond nature.
2) Nature is not the only thing that exists.

I think it should be noted that I'm not trying to get you to agree with this theory, I'm just trying to clear up what it actually states. Which isn't Platonism or Naturalism.

2155682

Differences in Naturalism:
1) Unmoved Mover is beyond nature.
2) Nature is not the only thing that exists.

How exactly is "nature" defined here?

2155682

Platonism immediately falls flat on its face, by definition. When something is abstract, does it exist?

Do you even lift Platonism? Okay, think of the concept of "a computer": You can make them out of literally anything (witness an abacus vs. a digital calculator, or a Babbage machine, or all those lego gizmos Google employees are always showing off); it's the relationships among the components that are the actual structure, and they're not made of anything whatsoever. Naturalism does not imply pure physicalism (though, of course, Information Is Physical - Probably another one of those "mass/energy" or "momentum/position" type symmetries the universe seems to be so fond of).
Same with analogies - They're essentially the basis of all thought, but they're just algebraic patterns into which we plug concrete "tokens" that have certain free-floating relationships to one another. "The Cadillac of burgers," etc.
And again with the justly famous Game of Life: No one invented these "machines;" they're pure abstraction independent of any physical medium, simply inherent in the game's three rules, and anyone in Creation (personally I prefer Roger Penrose's "Omnium" to "multiverse" and hope it catches on) would find those exact structures - It's just more convenient to manifest them in a computer than on a chalkboard (Really, in this sense, no one "invents" anything; it's just the universe realizing more things that were within itself all along, like the proverbial sculptor's elephant trapped inside the block of marble).

It's the reason we say people "discover" things in mathematics instead of "invent" them. Like Lao Tzu's meditation on how it's the emptiness inside a bowl or a house that makes them meaningful, they're what's left after the negative spaces carved out by all the things wrong "by definition."