Why We Can't Discover The Origin Of Existence

[StarMountainKid 7,657]

Here’s an idea I borrowed from a lecture by Leonard Susskind.

Here’s a diagram of a system that has lost all information of its origin, notated at “A”.

The arrows just designate the evolution of the system (universe). It’s not quite accurate in that the universe does not cycle back to some previous point in its evolution; rather the diagram represents how the system’s evolution can never return to its point of origin.

In this diagram Existence has an origin, but we can never access it. This would do away with the concept of Existence (multi-verse) as an infinite regression with no beginning or creation. What "A" would be, I don't know.

(By origin I don’t mean the Big Bang, but the origin of Existence itself, the multi-verses or whatever everything that exists is.)

Just an idea.

Edited October 14, 2012 by StarMountainKid

[Bling 1,142]

Why We Can't Discover The Origin Of Existence?

Because we're not that old.

[Professor Buzzkill 2,477]

Whatever the origin is (whether a natural force or otherwise) it can be described as a "powerful unknown force that started existance" which is exactly my definition of god.

I agree that an infinitely regressing universe gives us no answers, apart from putting the answer beyond our reach (much like the Panspermia theory of the origin life). However, i don't think we will ever be able to answer the ultimate question of how existence began.

[indirachap 0]

As cause and effect has never been violated surely it stands to reason that Existence has probably an infinite origin don't you think?

[StarMountainKid 7,657]

As cause and effect has never been violated surely it stands to reason that Existence has probably an infinite origin don't you think?

Going back to my diagrams:

The circle could stand for the premise that the ORIGIN exists but had no beginning. There is no point on the circle that describes a starting point. This doesn't necessarily mean the ORIGIN is infinite in time It would mean, as a circle has no starting point, the ORIGIN has no starting point.

The 2D circle could be thought of as infinite in circumference as it goes around and around forever, but this is just the information contained in the circle. The diameter of the circle is finite, so that the ORIGIN is finite as is the quantity of information. The arrow on the circle represents the closed-loop evolution of the ORIGIN.

I think in this sense the ORIGIN could be considered a finite system, so an infinite recursion would not apply to the circle.

[Rlyeh 10,224]

Existence is all that exists, if the origin exists then it too is part of existence.

[StarMountainKid 7,657]

Existence is all that exists, if the origin exists then it too is part of existence.

I'm just conjecturing that we can't access the information of the origin.

[lightly 4,665]

Rlyeh said:

Existence is all that exists, if the origin exists then it too is part of existence.

I like that a lot.

.... maybe it just seems like there had to be an origin or a beginning?

things are often more the way they are , than the way they seem?

[ranrod 170]

I see. As we look out into space, we see further and further back in time. So if we look in the right direction, shouldn't we see the big bang? Of course not. The way we phrase things in written language often confuse people and lead them down the wrong path. Telescopes are not time machines. We can see light that hasn't already dissipated past us - the point in your graph above the origin. At the origin, we were distributed throughout it.

Speculating about the origin is a philosophical subject at the moment. Hawkings made a case for the universe having a discrete origin without the need of a creator in his last book.

[pallidin 8,349]

Well, obviously there was an "origin" else nothing would be here.

[StarMountainKid 7,657]

Well, obviously there was an "origin" else nothing would be here.

True if we think of an origin in the same way that we consider the physical universe. Maybe the universe is just a by-product of something else in which 'origin' has no meaning. Something beyond cause and effect. It's hard to think like that because we're hard-wired to think all effects have causes. There are counter intuitive aspects of this universe, for example.

There is also the concept of time. Perhaps any 'origin' has no time dimension, even no space dimensions, and therefore cannot be considered as a starting point in time or space. This kind of 'origin' would lie beyond existence as we understand existence.

If every aspect of the universe can be described mathematically, maybe there is just non-conceptual mathematics floating around in some meta-? and universes are imperative consequences of this. After all, what is a number by itself? It has no physical existence, it describes nothing, yet the universe can be understood using these ethereal units that exist nowhere and have no origin in themselves.

I think we may be wrong in our thinking that 'something' created Existence, and equally wrong in asking what created this 'something', and what created that 'something', etc. Equally, we may be wrong in considering an infinite existence of Existence. Infinity is a human concept, too.

What we may be left with is beyond any possible human intellectual ability to infer. In Buddhism the Great Void is not something, not nothing, not-not something, not-not nothing, not-not-not something, not-not-not nothing, not-not-not-not something, not-not-not-not nothing,.....................................................

Edited October 23, 2012 by StarMountainKid