Neither being (sat) nor non-being was as yet. What was concealed?
And where? And in whose protection?…Who really knows?
Who can declare it? Whence was it born, and whence came this creation?
The devas (gods) were born later than this world’s creation,
so who knows from where it came into existence? None can know from where
creation has arisen, and whether he has or has not produced it.
He who surveys it in the highest heavens,
He alone knows or perhaps He does not know.”
— Rig Veda 10. 129
“We have discovered that all signs suggest a universe that could and plausibly did arise from a deeper nothing—involving the absence of space itself and—which may one day return to nothing via processes that may not only be comprehensible but also processes that do not require any external control or direction.”
Lawrence Krauss.
The other day I was watching a debate on my PC two people debating, a well known Scientist, and a Theologian, and I was struck by the vehemence of the speakers to hold to their interpretations of truth, and the virulent war from the people who commented on the debate, and was struck by the fact that, a very possible idea, few people know about the knew developments in Semantics.
Enter Semantics, or the Linguistic approach.
Michael Lynch (philosopher) has recently advocated a different type of pluralism about truth. In a series of articles and in his 2009 book Truth as One and Many Lynch argues that we should see truth as a functional property capable of being multiply manifested in distinct properties like correspondence or coherence.
Now, if you go back and reread the two views at the top of my post, you will discover the parallelism , or analogy of both statements.
The difference to me its the timeline one was expressed thousands of years ago in a more poetic fashion, the other one relatively recently on mathematical language by Mr. Krauss.
Cosmology
Now Cosmology its divided in several branches:
Physical cosmology, or Observational cosmology is a branch of cosmology concerned with the studies of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the universe and with fundamental questions about its origin, structure, evolution, and ultimate fate. Cosmology as a science originated with the Copernican principle, which implies that celestial bodies obey identical physical laws to those on Earth, and Newtonian mechanics, which first allowed those physical laws to be understood. Physical cosmology, as it is now understood, began with the development in 1915 of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, followed by major observational discoveries in the 1920s: first, Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe contains a huge number of external galaxies beyond the Milky Way; then, work by Vesto Slipher and others showed that the universe is expanding. These advances made it possible to speculate about the origin of the universe, and allowed the establishment of the Big Bang theory, by Georges Lemaître, as the leading cosmological model. A few researchers still advocate a handful of alternative cosmologies; however, most cosmologists agree that the Big Bang theory best explains the observations.
In physical cosmology, cosmic inflation, cosmological inflation, or just inflation, is a theory of exponential expansion of space in the early universe. The inflationary epoch lasted from 10−36 seconds after the conjectured Big Bang singularity to some time between 10−33 and 10−32 seconds after the singularity. Following the inflationary period, the universe continued to expand, but the expansion was no longer accelerating.
Inflation its the Physics theory was developed in the late 1970s and early 80s, with notable contributions by several theoretical physicists, including Alexei Starobinsky at Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, Alan Guth at Cornell University, and Andrei Linde at Lebedev Physical Institute. Alexei Starobinsky, Alan Guth, and Andrei Linde won the 2014 Kavli Prize “for pioneering the theory of cosmic inflation.” It was developed further in the early 1980s. It explains the origin of the large-scale structure of the cosmos. Quantum fluctuations in the microscopic inflationary region, magnified to cosmic size, become the seeds for the growth of structure in the Universe (see galaxy formation and evolution and structure formation). Many physicists also believe that inflation explains why the universe appears to be the same in all directions (isotropic), why the cosmic microwave background radiation is distributed evenly, why the universe is flat, and why no magnetic monopoles have been observed.
Religious Cosmology
Religious cosmology is an of the origin, explanation, evolution, and eventual fate of the universe, from a religious perspective. This may include beliefs on origin in the form of a creation myth, subsequent evolution, current organizational form and nature, and eventual fate or destiny. There are various traditions in religion or religious mythology asserting how and why everything is the way it is and the significance of it all. Religious cosmologies describe the spatial lay-out of the universe in terms of the world in which people typically dwell as well as other dimensions, such as the seven dimensions of religion; these are ritual, experience and emotional, narrative and mythical, doctrinal, ethical, social, and material. Religious mythologies may include descriptions of an act or process of creation by a creator deity or a larger pantheon of deities, explanations of the transformation of chaos into order, or the assertion that existence is a matter of endless cyclical transformations. Religious cosmology differs from a strictly scientific cosmology informed by the results of the study of astronomy and similar fields, and may differ in conceptualizations of the world’s physical structure and place in the universe, its creation, and forecasts or predictions on its future. The scope of religious cosmology is more inclusive than a strictly scientific cosmology (physical cosmology) in that religious cosmology is not limited to experiential observation, testing of hypotheses, and proposals of theories; for example, religious cosmology may explain why everything is the way it is or seems to be the way it is and prescribing what humans should do in context. Variations in religious cosmology include those of Indian origin, such as Buddhism, Hindu, and Jain; the religious beliefs of China; and, the beliefs of the Abrahamic faiths, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Religious cosmologies have often developed into the formal logics of metaphysical systems, such as Platonism, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, Daoism, Kabbalah, or the great chain of being.
Philosophy
Philosophical cosmology, philosophy of cosmology or philosophy of cosmos is a discipline directed to the philosophical contemplation of the universe as a totality, and to its conceptual foundations. It draws on several branches of philosophy—metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of physics, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, and on the fundamental theories of physics. The term cosmology was used at least as early as 1730, by German philosopher Christian Wolff, in Cosmologia Generalis.
Philosophical cosmology can be distinguished by two types of cosmological arguments: deductive and inductive cosmological arguments. The first type has a long tradition in the history of philosophy, proposed by thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and Leibniz, and criticized by thinkers like David Hume, Immanuel Kant and Bertrand Russell, while the latter has been formulated by philosophers like Richard Swinburne.
For Leibniz, all the plenum of the universe is entirely filled with tiny Monads, which cannot fail, have no constituent parts and have no windows through which anything could come in or go out. In his Aesthetics, philosopher José Vasconcelos explains his theory on the evolution of the universe and the restructuring of its cosmic substance, in the physical, biological and human orders.
Philosophical cosmology tries to respond questions such as:
What is the provenance of the cosmos?
What are the essential constituents of the cosmos?
Does the cosmos have an ulterior motive?
How does the cosmos behave?
How can we understand the cosmos in which we find ourselves?
As you can see every branch of Cosmology its occupy by the same questions, but looking at it from different approach or angles, but in reality its just a matter of difference in the use of Semantics, to some the Universe and Existence have purpose and meaning, to other its meaningless just a random occurrence.
My opinion?
Some are just more elegant, or inspiring than the others, and as you think so you are. And do not forget, The Knowing Self cannot be known as object, only as subject!
You may perceive the World outside yourself, but in reality it’s with your senses, and within your cognitive faculties you make sense of it, and its impossible to share it with anybody else except through language, and language its such a flawed tower of Babel.
Kone, Krusos, Kronos 
A mi siempre me fascino el universo. Allí sucedía toda mi imaginación de niño. Luego en la juventud, la luna ocupo su lugar cuando nos enamoramos. Ahora, el universo, la luna y las estrellas, se envuelven en mis versos porque soy romántico empedernido.
La aclaración viene a lugar, al leer tu artículo sobre las diferentes clases de cosmologías que existen en la actualidad. La que más pude entender fue la Cosmología Religiosa. Estudie en un seminario y tenía algo de conocimiento de filosofía, sobre todo, cuando se trataba de la creación. Se tenía que aceptar, si o si, a Santo Tomas de Aquino. Desde sus Teología Sistemática hasta su Teología Natural. Al final, creer era un don de fe y punto.
Lo demás, a decir verdad, todavía estoy digiriendo los conceptos.
Lo importante de leerte es que tu artículos me llevan a revisar conceptos que por primera vez los leo y eso es lo importante: mantener la mente ocupada y llenarse de conocimientos.
Un abrazo
Manuel
Gracias, Manuel, es interesante conocer tu perspectiva, y tu historia, algo que entiendo acerca de las diferentes Cosmologias y que al parecer poca gente comprende, es que una gran cantidad de estudios y esfuerzos cognitivos se requieren para llegar a su desarrollo, el choque y los argumentos entre personas con Cosmologias diferentes es comun, porque pueden ser expertos en su Cosmologia, pero conocen poco, o nada de la otra y se figuran que estan hablando tonterias.
Y la razon por lo que le llamo un problema de Semantica, o sea carecen de una familiaridad con los estudios y conceptos del otro y es comun en caer en discusiones infructuosas y acusaciones mutuas de ignorantes, e irracionales.
Gracias por tus confidencias y tu aporte, que considero valioso, sobre todo si estudiaste Teologia Tomista. 🙂
Por nada. Siempre estoy atento a tus publicaciones. Un abrazo grande.
Gracias, un abrazo también! 🙂
Really interesting to get an overview of the different approaches to Cosmology. I am not sure if language is a flawed tower of Babel. But yes, it has limitations to convey the perception of the world from one person to another. Of course this goes to the heart of what Kant was discussing in his Critique of Pure Reason.
Yes, a great quantity of knowledge its necessary to aboard any Cosmology, I am not a Physicist, or a Mathematician, but I always interested in what a Scientist has to say specially related to the origin of the Universe, but also a Philosopher, or a Theologian.
I mention on the beginning my post it struck me how similar are Cosmologies in what they say, but just positing different ideological values, behind it.
To a scientist it just particles, doing what they do randomly, to a Philosopher, or a Theologian they may see a principle, an order, a mind.
And punting into words is hard to convey, specially when you do not understand what the other is talking about.
Specially when words as nothing, or nothingness are brought to the fore!
Then those debates turn into a tower of Babel!
Thank you Otto. 🙂
“More tea, Vicar?”
Vicariously only please, otherwise it affects my sleeping time, like today. 🙂
Good support for the immune system though. 🙂
I am afraid I like it very much and drink too much of it. 🙂
Do to the Corona Virus we, here in Ticino, Switzerland, have to stay way from other people as much as possible, but we can still go out into the garden watch the birds, prepare the earth in order to plant the vegetable, paint or do other jobs and we are happy to have this possibilities!! This is the way I preceive the word at the moment.:) Have a very good day and best regards Martina
Hope that dark cloud, also moves away!
Thank you Martina, keep the good work in your garden, and also hope your heath is better.
Best wishes. 🙂
Grazie mille for your very kind words! You are right that the dark clouds will one day move away, but I also think that a lesson serves us very right in order to finally learn that we can’t exist on this world without a healthy nature! Best wishes:)
Totally agree.
Best wishes Martina! 🙂
This post is complex and many-layered and takes me straight back to UCLA and a philosophy class I was taking as a student there. I don’t know what I expected–sort of meandering discussions about the essence of existence and the answer to if a tree falls in the woods and nobody’s there to hear it, does it make a sound? But no! It was REALLY HARD, lol !!! I’m glad I took it. It was like being in a smaller room and peeking around a corner to discover a much larger room. But just reading your post reminded me of my confusion back then (and still somewhat now) and the more I read, the more questions I had. Nothing ever seemed to get fully answered, ha. But then again, on another level, it all made sense. Does that make sense?
Thank you.
I guess we all are predisposed according to our temperament, to be drawn by certain issues, and likes, or dislikes, I got to confess, I do not expect most of my posts to be popular with a majority of people, in fact few of my friends, or relatives, care to read me, but I do not mind, the few who may be interested are enough.
Once in a while those few who have some interest, like you they drop a line, and I am grateful for it.
Thank you for your comment. 🙂
The one thing I got out of my college philosophy classes was that we exist as blind men describing an elephant. Whatever conclusion we might draw about a circumstance always depends upon some fundamental assumption, such as a definition of “good”, “value”, or “reality”. The realization kept me from making some big mistakes later on, when I found myself having to make choices regarding graduate pursuits in a science. If a professor couldn’t explain his idea in a convincing manner, I wasn’t sure I really wanted him leading the way. In hindsight, it was a good instinct to have developed.
The physicist, Richard Feynman once commented to the effect that he was surprised at how many means could be used to arrive at a same answer, each route dependent upon some arbitrary definition of the nature of a problem. Is an effect the result of a wave, a particle, a probability, an observation, an interaction, a dynamic or a static phenomenon, a single result, or all possible results? One person feels a trunk, another a tusk, and still another a leg.
The brilliance of Feynman’s “diagrams” describing electromagnetic interactions is that they can be rotated in time and space and remain consistent, and yet describe a multitude of utterly opposing interactions… even things that go backward in time! Even Feynman didn’t claim to know why they worked so well. But they’ve been applied to what’s considered the single most accurate prediction in particle physics (the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron).
I’ve come to the conclusion that at the deeper levels, we’re probably asking all the wrong questions. Existing as just an infinitesimal part of a universe created of mere patterns, like self-examining software, we’re utterly unable even to describe, much less comprehend the meta-reality of that in which those patterns are held. So we create definitions for a universe based in the axioms we assume from our limited perspectives, mere cosmological semantics causing us to sense contradictions due to our limited knowledge of a sort of God of all things… reductionist / holistic, deterministic / free will… something / nothing.
I used to have a teacher who claimed specialization its the wrong thing to do.
His point was that a person who specialize, is generally a person who knows a lot about a specific field, and most of times, little about anything else, as the blind men touching the elephant, it all depends on what part they are touching, or the old saying:
“Can’t see the forest for the trees.”
Which alludes to the same thing, and therefore the arguing between the blind.
Thank you for your great comment. 🙂
The universe is just particles. It doesn’t matter what a philosopher “thinks” it is or what a theologian thinks either because both are wrong about it. It’s similar to how people thought gods and spirits moved the world and now we know they don’t. We know that reality is essentially just the laws of physics and any meaning is imposed by us.
You have miss the whole point of the post, semantics provide us with a mental frame, that not even Science can escape words frame out thoughts, and create our own subjective reality, we now talk about particles, and Quantum, like Lucretius wrote in his book:
De rerum natura tranlated as the “On the Nature of Things” Over two thousands years ago.
Who knows what Semantic constructs Humans may be making a hundred or thousand years from today?
I really don’t have much reason to ponder the origin of the universe these days. i’m Too nbusybtryimg to find hand sanitizer and a decent mask. Religion means very little
Strange commentary words coming from you when just a few days ago you published these ones on March 27, 2020.
“Thus our recent South India journey has given me good reason to reconsider what best drives me spiritually these days. For Hinduism has shown me the critical need for practicing daily goodness to nourish my “inner soul. In this “trying” time of the Corona pandemic where so many struggle now to stay healthy and survive, I could certainly use such moral guidance. What places that you have visited in your life similarly evoke new ideas of spirituality in your life.”
At many temples I visited, curious Hindu followers crowded near me to humbly rejoice that I would be sharing my photographs for them to see soon.”
It seem your convictions change as fast as a pair of socks!. 🙂
There is a difference in my mind between religion and spirituality. Maybe I was misunderstood about what I gained from my Indian travels. I should have said organized religion I guess.
No, you were not misunderstood, myself not religious, I guess you are Spiritual but not Religious, a wide category of people now day.
If you read my post I talk about the parallelism , or analogy, do not say that Science, and Religion are the same.
Just like its not the same to believe in a dogma, and to be open to a Spiritual idea, vague, or otherwise.
I gather that, even if in your recent trip to India you were singing a different song.
Good luck with your antivirus supply.:-)
Sorry for the the typos –
I am too busy trying to….
I like philosophy more, like you mention different approaches to everything and truth. Cosmology is something I’m not very familiar with.
I think definition of truth can be interpreted in many ways. Regarding cosmology, who is ever going to discover truth? Maybe that’s why some scientific explorations are amazing because they allow for multiple explanations of truth.
Can we ever be sure what is truth or what is not? I think, we will base that on our personal experience and what we have found out so far. And everybody will stick to their own truth if they have an opinion and especially a strong one based on facts which are known to them.
Well cosmology is pretty much known at this point thanks to advances physics and science. It’s nothing to do with personal experience or anything mystics want to say, people just don’t like solutions to questions because then it would mean being wrong.
My whole point, there is many ways to look at things, and the only common thing they have, it’s you have to express it through language, and right there you arrive at the place of difference, and disagreement, since words do not have a fix, and eternal meaning, words have the value that you subjectively give to them, and for each person it becomes a particular set of mind, or a way to see things, therefore it’s according to the values you have, the way you interpret the World, as the Philosopher Derrida understood.
Values are attached to words, and every mind it’s a Universe within itself, with his own set of definitions.
And that where the problem lay, since we all do have our own experience, and way to see things.
Here below you have a clear example Xain commenting claiming that Physics and Science, already gave us an answer.
Thank you Inese, we appreciate your comment. 🙂
You miss the mark again.
Post modernism doesn’t apply to science however, in this case cosmology. There was an entire debacle over why it doesn’t work there. It does have a point in other fields but not science.
Results in science tend to be consistent regardless of the language used. Every mind isn’t a universe within itself, it doesn’t matter what you call something or how you refer to it, it doesn’t change the results science gives us.
Physics and science already has the answer to this, you just don’t want to admit it. Also once again you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about and how to apply philosophical arguments. Trying to apply Derrida to science, seriously. Especially after I showed how wrong your previous posts regarding science were.
Well here its an anecdote to express my point:
Corie Brown, a continuity announcer for Channel 4 in the U.K., is known for her tenacious voice and feisty personality – but her big voice didn’t help at all when she was trying to get Jenny Lay-Flurrie’s attention at Future Decoded, an October 2019 Microsoft event in London where the two would share a stage for an interview.
“I will never forget her running down the backstage corridor, yelling after me, until someone reminded her I was deaf,” said Lay-Flurrie, Microsoft’s chief accessibility officer. “You’ve got a deaf girl interviewing a legally blind woman, which is funny on its own. But Corie and I were chatting afterwards, and I told her one of my problems is voicemail. People call me all the time and leave me voicemails, even though my voicemail actually says thank you for calling, but please don’t bother leaving a message. Send me an email, shoot me a text. A couple days later, after I’d returned to the U.S., she’s professionally recorded new voicemail messages for me. ‘This is Jenny’s phone, Jenny’s deaf, she’s not going to answer. Thank you.’ We cried laughing.
“I don’t get voicemails anymore.”
We all speak a different language. Language itself if it needs to be put in writing is made out of symbols, in order to understand them, we need to decipher them, jut like mathematics that they provide their meaning, but also ancient languages, who some we still try to decipher, different national languages, different ways to look at a problem, and many different ways to come to an understanding.
If you reread my piece you will understand my meaning, or not! 🙂
You’ve missed my point entirely and ended up proving it.
Science isn’t the same thing as language. Postmodernism is really only applicable when it comes to the humanities. A volcano doesn’t change what happens inside it regardless of the language used. A cat can only eat meat regardless of the languages one uses.
Cosmology is no exception. Physics doesn’t change based on language and either does math.
The knowing self can be known as object. And it is possible to share our perceptions with others. Language isn’t perfect but it’s still getting its point across.
Meaning is something we impose on the universe it doesn’t have any to begin with. You can choose to ignore the science that explains everything but that doesn’t change the truth of it. Evolution and quantum physics are independent of culture after all. Once more you reveal you ignorance.
Also your anecdote proves nothing. Obviously a dead woman wouldn’t understand someone talking to them.
Lets see, do all Mathematicians agree?
And before replying to me, please read the comment section of the video, and you do the arguing there with your fellow mathematician, that should keep you busy! 🙂
Missing the point again. You are citing the aspects of mathematics that get into the abstract. When the evidence and data are less clear then you get competing theories and conclusions from that until more data is acquired. Quantum physics has multiple interpretations but the nature of the field is difficult and defies how the macro world works. Also that video doesn’t prove your case about language.
But you aren’t addressing my points, merely citing obscure cases that skirt the main arguments. Mathematics can be verified to work repeatedly, as can be evidences by the technological marvels around us. Same with science. The reason we have science is because we can’t rely on personal anecdotes, it’s not perfect but it’s better than anything else we have.
Also I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove by showing me the comments. Again this is an abstract field of math and the stuff there isn’t as solid as in other areas. Disagreements don’t necessarily mean different realities, sometimes it’s just people denying the truth like evolution or climate change.
Once more you reveal your ignorance and that you don’t know what you’re talking about, just like your solipsism page.
No, the one who is missing the point is you my friend!
Mathematicians can agree, as long as they keep a set of values fix.
The moment the values become blurry as the example you cite:
“Quantum physics has multiple interpretations but the nature of the field is difficult and defies how the macro world works.”
it’s exactly my point!
And please go and spend your time arguing about the things you know best, is clear to me that semantics is not your field of expertise, neither Cosmologies. I want to see your arguments on the video with the people you disagree, and see how you fare there, let me know, before replying. 🙂
You clearly aren’t understanding here. The reason for the multiple interpretations of quantum physics is because the nature of the subject defies our physical laws. It’s “weird” because what applies there doesn’t carry over to macro particles.
In the case of math you are talking about an abstract concept like infinity. But literally all the rest of the videos on there prove my point about math so my guess is you know jack about any of this stuff which is why you just drop links and leave. Like the solipsism article, it writes like you don’t read the wiki link. You have no ideas or thinking of your own, you leave it to others to to argue without understanding anything.
Lastly that video is 4 years old, I’m never gonna get a response on there.
The point of science and math is progress. It’s a little at a time but eventually the abstract becomes concrete. The next breakthrough could be the answer.
Still you reveal your ignorance
Everything to a certain point is abstract Xian, and that is where you fail to see things you do not know.
Cobbler go back to your shoes!
And stop pestering me with your infantile notions of make change my mind, about stuff you do not have study, even remotely!
Besides you are wasting a lot of your time, and mine, and you are a Troll, as:
“A troll (noun) was originally a mythical ugly creature, now it usually means an intentionally disruptive person on the internet. … That’s how baiting people on the internet came to be known as trolling.”
Idiots, prevail everywhere, a little knowledge of something, and they believe they can ride like a Quixote destroying wind mills.
When in their life have hold a book in their hand that talks a bout something else but their reduced field of knowledge, and they pontificate with such arrogance, like if they were a Wittgenstein!
The opposite of this authentic self, is everyday and inauthentic Dasein, the forfeiture of one’s individual meaning, destiny and lifespan, in favor of an (escapist) immersion in the public everyday world—the anonymous, identical world of the They, and the Them.
So please stop this nonsense, I will delete your answer after this one period.
Religious and philosophical cosmology have been made obsolete by recent advances in astronomy. Theoretical physics and cosmology are 20th and 21st century developments. We never could see so far into the skies before. Of course, all the great questions of the universe and especially of human psychology remain beyond our reach, but why speculate when we can look at Hubble photos?
I understand Science is the zeitgeist of the day, however in my personal opinion there’s nothing new under the sun, science it’s just the new lingua franca, but most scientist are totally ignorant about other sphere of knowledge, so you got to take it with a grain of salt their personal beliefs, and new cosmology.
If you study ancient Hindu beliefs you find everything, materialist, theist, atheist, agnostics, and cosmologies not so much different at what scientist are coming with today, Universes, that created, and destroyed, to be reborn again.
Thank you for your comment. 🙂
That’s very true what you say about the Hindu and Eastern mythologies. They ring true to scientific evidence. The Judeo Christian and all mythologies all possess wisdom regarding the cosmos, the outer world. The quest for knowledge goes on.
You are right, thank you for your comment. 🙂