Understanding the Universe: Order, Origin, and Reality
Levels of Reality
Our journey begins with the distinction between different levels of reality: emotional, societal, planetary, and cosmic. While the closest levels hold the most immediate importance for us, we also retain a sense of wonder about the vast universe.
What is the Universe?
Defining the universe as “everything that exists” raises questions that have intrigued philosophers for centuries. From the early cosmologists to Pascal in the 17th century, the universe has been a source of both curiosity and awe.
Mythical vs. Philosophical Explanations
Early mythical explanations provided profound and suggestive ways of understanding the world. These narratives were eventually replaced by the impersonal elements offered by early philosophers. This shift had several key advantages:
- Philosophical explanations represented a personal viewpoint on existence, contrasting with the orally transmitted mythic tradition.
- They often employed non-anthropomorphic elements—materials or intellectual forms—as explanatory tools.
- Philosophical ideas represented an ultimate reality beyond subjective anxieties, distinguishing between appearance (perceived by the senses) and underlying reality (grasped by reason).
- Unlike myths, philosophical ideas arose from debate and did not require uncritical emotional support. They lacked the ethnocentric limitations of myths.
However, philosophical reasoning can also create barriers between different schools of thought.
Three Cosmological Questions
Three fundamental questions drive our inquiry:
- What is the universe?
- Does it have an order or design?
- What is its origin?
Defining the Universe
Two primary definitions of the universe emerge:
- Light: An indeterminate collection of all existence, lacking a specific entity for separate theorization.
- Heavy (Greek conception): A distinct whole, separate from its parts, raising specific questions about its nature.
The “heavy” definition, favored by Greek philosophers, presents the challenge of applying large-scale questions to a reduced scale. Kant, for instance, grappled with the difficulty of conceiving the infinite as finite. Fernando Pessoa, in “Masks and Paradoxes,” suggested that the universe, like consciousness, is only real as a whole, not as individual objects or parts.
Order and Design
The terms “cosmos” and “universe” imply an order or design accessible to reason. However, Hesiod’s “Theogony” speaks of original chaos, and Heraclitus attributed a random origin to the universe.
What do we mean by order? Order implies structured relationships between unity and plurality. Is this order inherent in things themselves, or is it a product of our thinking? Kant, in his “Critique of Pure Reason,” argued that the order we perceive in the universe is a reflection of our way of knowing.
The Nature of Order
Regularities in nature allow scientists to make predictions. The objectivity of cosmic order seemingly rests on causal determinism. But are causal laws universal, as Descartes believed, or do they have a random element, as Lucretius argued? Contemporary physics leans towards a less rigid determinism, closer to Lucretius’s view. This causal uncertainty may reflect our evolving understanding of nature.
Is the entire universe ordered like the portion we know? Could this order be the cause of our existence? Robert Dicke and Brandon Carter have explored the idea that the observed regularities in the universe are linked to our presence within it.
The Origin of the Universe
Three scenarios address the origin of the universe:
- The First Cause: Asking about the origin of the universe is akin to asking about the cause of all causes. If the universe is everything that exists, then a cause outside of it seems paradoxical.
- Eternal Existence: Parmenides, in his “Path of Reason,” argued that being is eternal and unchanging. This raises the question of how to reconcile the successive time and causality we experience with an infinite, unchanging universe.
- A Creator God: The concept of a creator god introduces similar paradoxes of eternity and infinity. Hume, in his “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion,” points out the difference between a watchmaker (whose work we can observe) and a creator god (whose actions are beyond our experience).
Even the Big Bang theory presents paradoxes. What caused the initial explosion? While the Big Bang may be the source of everything around us, it begs the question of what existed before it. The universe, if it is a single entity, is unique among all things. And it is within this unique entity that we, as humans, exist and act.