The Mysteries of Science #1 – What Happened Before the Big Bang? (Part 1)
BOOK III: The Enigmatic Mystery (Science & Religion) – Consideration #183
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Tuesday April 8, 2025
“No one knows who wrote the laws of physics or where they come from. Science is based on testable, reproducible evidence, and so far we cannot test the universe before the Big Bang.”
– Michio Kaku
PREFACE
Welcome Everybody!
We do not usually associate science with unsolvable enigmatic mysteries. Most people equate science with truth and facts, as expressed by Neil deGrasse Tyson, “The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.” This was once a widely accepted view of modern science. However, this may no longer apply to many current scientific theories such as string theory.
Science cannot demonstrate the empirical truth of string theory, a completely rational theory which appears to change almost daily, with constant additions and subtractions of new possible dimensions of space-time. To a great extent the validity of string theory is determined by the elegance of the mathematics that support the theory.
“You must be literate in the language of mathematics to truly understand string theory…”
We can understand the practical truth of chemistry and chemical reactions. We can understand the practical truth of genetics and how DNA works. We can understand the practical truths of biology and how medicine works. But we really cannot understand the truth of string theory or how it works in any practical way.
You must be literate in the language of mathematics to truly understand string theory; and even then, specific theories cannot be empirically proven to be true, only recognized as elegant mathematical solutions. String theory is a rational, not empirical, consideration of reality. Much like the scientific considerations regarding what happened before the Big Bang.
“…there is no empirical way to know what started the Big Bang.”
Empirical science, as we have traditionally known it, cannot determine what reality was like prior to the Big Bang, because there was no empirical reality and there were no laws of physics prior to the Big Bang. It is a purely rational consideration. Meaning there is no empirical way to know what started the Big Bang. Considering the original cause of the Big Bang is much like the ontological argument for God as a first cause; inherently impossible to ever empirically prove.
CONSIDERATION #183 – What Happened Before the Big Bang?
There is perhaps no greater mystery in science than what was happening prior to the Big Bang. What makes this particular mystery so unique is that it is inherently unsolvable through scientific means, because the “laws of physics” did not exist prior to the Big Bang. Before the Big Bang there was no universe, no time, no space, no matter. Prior to the Big Bang’s mysterious self-actualization into reality, there was no universe or laws of physics to govern it, only the potential residing in a theoretical possibility called a singularity.
“…science can never know what happened before the Big Bang.”
We can follow the laws of physics all the way back to just after the Big Bang, however prior to that there are no laws of physics to follow. Therefore, science can never know what happened before the Big Bang. However, many scientists agree that if we can somehow reconcile Einstein’s theories with quantum mechanics and unify the worlds of the large (Einstein/Relativity) and the small (Quantum Mechanics) it may be possible to have a better understanding of where the universe actually came from.
“The twin pillars of modern physics are Einstein’s General Relativity and quantum theory. The former reigns supreme in the large-scale Universe, while the latter orchestrates the small-scale world of atoms and their constituents. They have resisted a merger, which is a problem because, in the Big Bang, the Universe was small.
To understand how it emerged, it is essential to unite Einstein’s theory with quantum theory. The best candidate is ‘string theory’, which views the basic building blocks of reality as tiny strings of mass-energy vibrating in 10-dimensional space-time. Only if we obtain such a theory will we be able to answer the ultimate questions: What is space? What is time? What is the Universe? And where did it come from?”
– Marcus Chown, What was before the Big Bang? Everything you need to know.
However, string theory, as we shall see, is inherently a rational consideration of reality based on “elegant” mathematical abstraction. Even stranger than the relativistic universe of Einstein that shattered our standard conception of space and time, string theory introduces the necessity for completely new, imperceptible, dimensions of space and time. Instituting even more mathematical rationalism into the reality equation.
The mysteries of science are not solved by string theory, only expanded.
POSTSCRIPT
The famous physicist, Stephen Hawking, suggested that it is meaningless to talk about a “time” before the Big Bang because there was no “time” before the Big Bang. He proposed a theory in which what we call “time” only exists as a cross-section of an expanding universe evolving from one moment to the next: a correlation between the expanding size of the universe and other properties such as entropy; the increasing disorder within a system.
“Hawking, in his brilliance, saw a way to end the interminable groping backward in time: He proposed that there’s no end, or beginning, at all. According to the record of the Vatican conference, the Cambridge physicist, then 39 and still able to speak with his own voice, told the crowd, ‘There ought to be something very special about the boundary conditions of the universe, and what can be more special than the condition that there is no boundary?’
…Hartle and Hawking derived a formula describing the whole shuttlecock — the so-called ‘wave function of the universe’ that encompasses the entire past, present and future at once — making moot all contemplation of seeds of creation, a creator, or any transition from a time before.
‘Asking what came before the Big Bang is meaningless, according to the no-boundary proposal, because there is no notion of time available to refer to,’ Hawking said in another lecture at the Pontifical Academy in 2016, a year and a half before his death. ‘It would be like asking what lies south of the South Pole.’”
– Natalie Wolchover, Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning
Hawking’s paradoxical concept of a “boundless boundary” is reminiscent of Aristotle’s “Unmoved mover,” “A Trilogy of One” in Christian theology, the Taoist principle of “Action through Non-action” and a myriad of other rational “non-scientific” considerations of reality. Hawking, like Aristotle, Christian Theology, Taoist philosophy, and more, agree that ultimately there is no way to empirically consider reality prior to what we consider to be the rational universe. Before the manifestation of the physical universe, all that exists is paradox and mystery.
“…scientists continue to pursue the mystery.”
Despite Hawking’s, and others, caution against pursuing the indeterminable paradox of attempting to discover what occurred prior to the Big Bang, scientists still continue to pursue the mystery. In part two of What Happened Prior to the Big Bang, we will consider three current scientific theories regarding how the universe was manifested. Can they help to clarify the paradox called the Big Bang or the mystery of reality we call the universe?
But first a consideration of the theological interpretation of reality prior to “the beginning” of the universe. Next week we will consider “the beginning” from a theological perspective…
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