Creation ex nihilo

[Nate Smith 0]

I'd like to understand a little better why something can't be created from nothing. Occasionally I hear the claim that this actually happens in nature (apparently according to some modern theories?). Searching this Forum, I see that people claim that creation ex nihilo violates the law of identity. That reasoning isn't perfectly clear to me, and I'm hoping someone can elaborate on that. Thanks.

[ewv 0]

That kind of creationism usually means a creation of the universe -- everything that is -- out of nothing. But there is no metaphysical nothing. "Nothing" is not a kind of existence. It is a derivative concept referring to a state of something, like nothing in your pocket as meaning no coins, no handkerchief, no keys, etc. are in there. The reference is to the something as not being there. If there were no existence, there would be nothing to create it either. This is a different question than how was the physical universe 'created' as a transformation of something else if it didn't already exist in its current form, which is a question of science.

[Nate Smith 0]

I'm pretty comfortable with the problems that are created by asserting the "nothing exists." I can see how such a claim is contradictory. I'm not as clear on how it would be a contradiction to claim that "something sprung into existence from nothing."

If there were no existence, there would be nothing to create it either.

This is what I'm interested in thinking through. Does something need to be created from something else? Is it a contradiction to say "this particle sprung into existence" (and if so, how exactly)?

[ewv 0]

Given that 'nothing' is not a kind of 'something', what could it mean to say that something came from nothing? What does "sprung" mean - a process with no identity?

Things come into being by some kind of change, which presupposes something that changes its form, in combination with something else and by some specific means in accordance with some cause (identify applied to action) -- whether it occurs 'naturally' or under the influence of some conscious agent. That is why we have science like physics to explain the nature of how things change, and engineering to explain how to accomplish some kind of change by some specific means to create something new.

That much you know and is routine; it's what you start with, so what else is there?

You may discover some event such as a particle suddenly appearing and not yet know how it happens, but you can't violate identity and causality with the notion of things happening for no cause and not in accordance with the nature of anything. Covering that over by saying something "sprung" into existence -- implicitly meaning without regard to identity and means of it happening, or that something came from literally "nothing", makes no sense. If someone speaks in such terms as "sprung" and "from nothing" it is up to him to explain what that is supposed to mean.

[Arnold 0]

I'd like to understand a little better why something can't be created from nothing. Occasionally I hear the claim that this actually happens in nature (apparently according to some modern theories?). Searching this Forum, I see that people claim that creation ex nihilo violates the law of identity. That reasoning isn't perfectly clear to me, and I'm hoping someone can elaborate on that. Thanks.

There is an underlying assumption in this question. That is, that there was a time that nothing existed. This implies that time exists independent of, and prior to existence. Time is the measurement of motion, and cannot exist outside of existence because it is IN existence and measured as a series of events, which depend on existents. Thus, there has never been a time without existence, and no need for it to spring from anywhere.

[Paul's Here 0]

I'd like to understand a little better why something can't be created from nothing. Occasionally I hear the claim that this actually happens in nature (apparently according to some modern theories?). Searching this Forum, I see that people claim that creation ex nihilo violates the law of identity. That reasoning isn't perfectly clear to me, and I'm hoping someone can elaborate on that. Thanks.

There is also the issue of what constitutes an explanation. Does "something springing from nothing" explain anything? Why is that considered a valid explanation? Why does something that exists require an explanation based upon "nothing"? It's like saying, God created the universe. What does that explain? Not much. What created God? What created that creator? Etc... The only evidence we have of creation is that some entities are created by other entities.

[ewv 0]

That is the usual, common context. But he is asking (either in addition to that or by itself) about events in the existing universe, as in his example "this particle sprung into existence" without specifying what "sprung" means.

[Carlos 0]

Occasionally I hear the claim that this actually happens in nature (apparently according to some modern theories?).

Sufficiently high energy photons of light (gamma rays) can collide to make matter antimatter particle pairs, and the process is reversible. I'm guessing this might be what you were thinking of, but it is still not "something from nothing". Photons are still entities, even if they are massless and can interact to produce entities with mass.

The Big Bang theory is definitely something from nothing, and it is absurd. It is like manmade catastrophic global warming theory, in that it has absolutely no compelling observational evidence, and the theory has never offered any blind predictions for testing, yet a large number of scientists succumb to groupthink. It is rationalistic gobbledygook that begins with the presumption that it is true, and then searches for facts that match deductions from said presumption. Because there are a lot of facts in the universe, it is always easy to at least find one or two that are consistent (for example, the observation that a room gets dark when a light bulb breaks is consistent with the theory that light bulbs suck in darkness and when they break they release the stored darkness). But eventually the "theory" runs aground of stubborn facts that aren't consistent, so then they rewrite reality to keep the theory alive by piling on more arbitrary assumptions that magic-wand away the contradiction. For example, I think one of the earliest problems with the Big Bang was that the universe couldn't expand fast enough, so "Inflation theory" was invented, whereby they basically arbitrarily speculated that it could inflate preposterously fast with no testable way of measuring and verifying that this is even possible (except of course to charm the public into building absurdly expensive particle accelerators, baiting them with the hope of "spillover technology").

[AlexL 0]

The Big Bang theory is definitely something from nothing, and it is absurd.

The Big Bang theory may be wrong, but it is definitely not "something from nothing": it does not assume an empty universe, that is zero mass/energy.

[Paul's Here 0]

The Big Bang theory is definitely something from nothing, and it is absurd.

The Big Bang theory may be wrong, but it is definitely not "something from nothing": it does not assume an empty universe, that is zero mass/energy.

That is not the way the theory is described here.

Big Bang Theory - Common Misconceptions

There are many misconceptions surrounding the Big Bang theory. For example, we tend to imagine a giant explosion. Experts however say that there was no explosion; there was (and continues to be) an expansion. Rather than imagining a balloon popping and releasing its contents, imagine a balloon expanding: an infinitesimally small balloon expanding to the size of our current universe.

Another misconception is that we tend to image the singularity as a little fireball appearing somewhere in space. According to the many experts however, space didn't exist prior to the Big Bang. Back in the late '60s and early '70s, when men first walked upon the moon, "three British astrophysicists, Steven Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose turned their attention to the Theory of Relativity and its implications regarding our notions of time. In 1968 and 1970, they published papers in which they extended Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to include measurements of time and space.^{1, 2}According to their calculations, time and space had a finite beginning that corresponded to the origin of matter and energy."³The singularity didn't appear in space; rather, space began inside of the singularity. Prior to the singularity, nothing existed, not space, time, matter, or energy - nothing.

[ewv 0]

The notion of an actual "singularity" that is an actual infinite within an actual infinitesimal region embedded in nothing is a floating abstraction with no meaning.

[Carlos 0]

The Big Bang theory is definitely something from nothing, and it is absurd.

The Big Bang theory may be wrong, but it is definitely not "something from nothing": it does not assume an empty universe, that is zero mass/energy.

Yes it would have begun from a little dense seed that exploded outward, but that is a something with no possible meaning. It's not just that this dense seed exploded outwards into space; space was also part of the seed, so there was "nothing" that existed outside the seed. Somehow this primordial seed was space while it simultaneously is expanding (into what?) into nothing. Never mind that expansion presupposes a measurable extent, but only entities can have measurable extents; there isn't a distance "around" existence, distances exist within existence.

There isn't even an explainable reason why it happened. So yes, it's something from nothing, because it arbitrarily states that existence appeared where there was no existence.

[ewv 0]

Nothing can expand "into" "somewhere" in nothing -- there is no "where" to go "into". The notion of expansion employed is expanding with respect to itself -- becoming larger as measured within itself, just as today's physical universe is conceived of expanding in terms of a distance across what is, not with respect to "outside the universe".

Space is a relationship between entities. You can measure an expanding "room" you might be inside without regard to what is outside, but it doesn't mean there is no outside. And you can imagine going somewhere out from what you know of, with nothing known beyond in the direction you are going, but as you try to imagine it you are the entity with a new position relative to where you started, and you are moving with respect to something, whether the atmosphere or whatever else is there to move through, and with respect to the planets and stars you in fact do know exist at that scale. It isn't a literal 'nothing' that you can strain to imagine going to.

In the case of the scale of the universe, no one has experienced the alleged phenomena or any phenomena at the unknown enormous distances projected. No one knows what it's like "out there" and to what extent we can extrapolate what we already know. It is all regarded very abstractly in mathematical terms and must be done very carefully without falling into rationalism. The geometry is dangerous grounds for stolen concepts and floating abstractions in addition to the supposed actual infinities at an infinitely small "seed" alleged to be the source of the entire universe.

We can only think in terms of what we do know and can account for empirically at whatever sources in the chain of levels of abstractions in a hierarchy. We must consistently maintain the concept of space as a relation among entities, and must always maintain the meaning and sources giving rise to our concepts. The nature of the physical universe at such enormous distances is a problem of science. It cannot be deduced from philosophical speculation, and attempts to wonder about things coming from "nothing" are worthless and cognitively destructive.

[Paul's Here 0]

Why couldn't one just drop the epistemological errors and simply state the same basic facts of the theory: All matter was compressed into a highly condensed singularity where no matter or energy existed outside of it, and without the implication that there is a real "nothing" outside of all the matter. Why would it be improper to just say "there is no matter or energy outside this "singularity"? Then, at some point, the matter and energy expanded to produce the form of the universe as it is currently observed. The issue is that there was no "nothing" outside of the singularity, the proper thing to state is that there just was no matter or energy outside of it. The lack of matter or energy outside the singularity is just as much a part of the universe as the singularity. This would be analogous to me saying "There is no 'me' outside of my house, yet this has no implications that I cannot go outside my house or that there is nothing outside of my house.

Is there some error with this formulation?

[Arnold 0]

Why couldn't one just drop the epistemological errors and simply state the same basic facts of the theory: All matter was compressed into a highly condensed singularity where no matter or energy existed outside of it, and without the implication that there is a real "nothing" outside of all the matter. Why would it be improper to just say "there is no matter or energy outside this "singularity"? Then, at some point, the matter and energy expanded to produce the form of the universe as it is currently observed. The issue is that there was no "nothing" outside of the singularity, the proper thing to state is that there just was no matter or energy outside of it. The lack of matter or energy outside the singularity is just as much a part of the universe as the singularity. This would be analogous to me saying "There is no 'me' outside of my house, yet this has no implications that I cannot go outside my house or that there is nothing outside of my house.

Is there some error with this formulation?

What bothers me about the whole concept of "size" of the universe, is the yard stick of measurement. What also bothers me is the yardstick of "time" (speed of light) under these circumstances. Just how long does it take for light to travel the width of a universe the size of a foot ball?

[AlexL 0]

Yes it would have begun from a little dense seed that exploded outward, but that is a something with no possible meaning.

Well, I was not arguing about the B-B theory being correct or having meaning, but about it being about creation from nothing.

So that I am now confused: do you still maintain that the B-B theory assumes a zero initial mass/energy?

Paul's Here: That is not the way the theory is described here.

In a situation like this, where one is condemned to rely on others for information, the source' credentials are essential. This site happen to have very bad ones, with a vested interest in a specific point of view: it is an explicitly religious site - look up "About Us". I suppose it is also not peer reviewed...

Besides, the same article, second paragraph, states:

Our universe is thought to have begun as an … infinitely dense something

[There is, however, no contradiction with your quote, because the latter is about what was before the Big Bang, and that is not part of the B-B theory proper.]

[AlexL 0]

Even Wikipedia is a better source, because it is, in a sense, peer reviewed. A quote from there:

According to the Big Bang model, the Universe expanded from an extremely dense and hot state…

[ewv 0]

Why couldn't one just drop the epistemological errors and simply state the same basic facts of the theory: All matter was compressed into a highly condensed singularity where no matter or energy existed outside of it, and without the implication that there is a real "nothing" outside of all the matter. Why would it be improper to just say "there is no matter or energy outside this "singularity"? Then, at some point, the matter and energy expanded to produce the form of the universe as it is currently observed. The issue is that there was no "nothing" outside of the singularity, the proper thing to state is that there just was no matter or energy outside of it. The lack of matter or energy outside the singularity is just as much a part of the universe as the singularity. This would be analogous to me saying "There is no 'me' outside of my house, yet this has no implications that I cannot go outside my house or that there is nothing outside of my house.

Is there some error with this formulation?

The singularity is regarded as an actual infinity with the universe being contained at that point in an actual infinitesimal. Stephen Speicher once posted on the Forum that he had personally asked the leading proponents about that and, as I recall, all of them actualized the infinity.

What does it mean to say "there is no matter or energy outside this 'singularity'?" You can only conceptualize and refer to what is, not what is literally, metaphysically not. "Outside" is a spatial relation that does not pertain to "nothing". If there is no matter and no energy there is no physical universe and the concept of "space" is not applicable. Nothing is nothing. And so is the hypothesized "something" as an "infinity".

The hypothesis also does not, as Carlos noted, deal with anything happening before the 'big bang'. There is no "point" in a history at which matter and energy expanded. There is no past at all -- just a "singularity" -- and no notion of having been "compressed", only an instantaneous state of infinity, whatever that is supposed to mean.

The most you can do is try to think about what the solutions of the equations could mean at times after the mathematical singularity, i.e., excluding regions in the domain for which the equations can represent no actual measurements and no identity, and that leaves the question of what in the universe could possibly validate such a theory and the validity of the equations and what in reality, which presumably includes no "outside" at all, is referred to -- including what is the nature of the region at the bounding edge (with literally nothing "beyond" it). As conventionally propounded it is literally meaningless.

[ewv 0]

What bothers me about the whole concept of "size" of the universe, is the yard stick of measurement. What also bothers me is the yardstick of "time" (speed of light) under these circumstances. Just how long does it take for light to travel the width of a universe the size of a foot ball?

Usually what is referred to is the size of the known universe as observed.

A lightyear is a unit of distance, not time. It is the distance that light travels in a 'vacuum' (index of refraction = 1) in one year, which is approximately 186,000 miles/sec * 60 * 60 * 24 * 365 = 5.9 * 10^12 miles = 5,900,000,000,000 miles.

The time in fractions of a second it takes for light to travel the length of a football is the length of football as a fraction of a mile/186,000 miles per second.

[Paul's Here 0]

What bothers me about the whole concept of "size" of the universe, is the yard stick of measurement. What also bothers me is the yardstick of "time" (speed of light) under these circumstances. Just how long does it take for light to travel the width of a universe the size of a foot ball?

Usually what is referred to is the size of the known universe as observed.

A lightyear is a unit of distance, not time. It is the distance that light travels in a 'vacuum' (index of refraction = 1) in one year, which is approximately 186,000 miles/sec * 60 * 60 * 24 * 365 = 5.9 * 10^12 miles = 5,900,000,000,000 miles.

The time in fractions of a second it takes for light to travel the length of a football is the length of football as a fraction of a mile/186,000 miles per second.

If you assume that the speed of light was always constant, then it doesn't make sense, within the theory of the Big Bang, that the universe could get this big in only 13.5 billion years.

[AlexL 0]

In my view, before declaring something as being absurd, in a field which is so far from our everyday experience, so unintuitive, one should seek answers from a good scientist working in the field, or at least some specialized FAQ's.

There are many Big Bang FAQ's, some of which are maintained by professionals working in the field of General Relativity and Cosmology. This and this (?) are but two examples; they address some of the questions asked here.

[ewv 0]

To understand what the actual science means requires learning the science, including its mathematics, not just FAQs. For questions like how the size of the known universe is determined, some limited understanding can be had from summaries, but no science can reify infinities and nothings, which are absurd. To understand how far you can get without falling into that realm you have to learn the science and the evidence for it. The same goes for relativity and quantum physics. Popularized accounts trying to summarize it are generally worthless. But Nate's thread and his opening question were about the notion of creating something from nothing.

[AlexL 0]

To understand what the actual science means requires learning the science, including its mathematics, not just FAQs.

[...] no science can reify infinities and nothings...

Sure, but my point was that, for those to whom the science itself is not accessible, looking up Wiki or an FAQ could help understand what a theory is (and is not!) about, provide some answers and clear some misconceptions and misunderstandings.

Infinities/singularities - the genuine ones - in the equations of a physical theory always signal the breakdown of its validity in the vicinity of such points and the scientist are very well aware of this.

[ewv 0]

To understand what the actual science means requires learning the science, including its mathematics, not just FAQs.

[...] no science can reify infinities and nothings...

Sure, but my point was that, for those to whom the science itself is not accessible, looking up Wiki or an FAQ could help understand what a theory is (and is not!) about, provide some answers and clear some misconceptions and misunderstandings.

It beats speculation, but even those sources are very limited. Aside from the lack of conceptual understanding of the mathematical formulations and how the evidence works, there is a tendency to 'dumb it down' and employ analogies that can be misleading, exacerbated by poor philosophical understanding even by the technical experts and which encourage false notions. It's very hard for a non-specialist to know what to believe and whom to trust.

Infinities/singularities - the genuine ones - in the equations of a physical theory always signal the breakdown of its validity in the vicinity of such points and the scientist are very well aware of this.

See if you can find Stephen Speicher's discussion on this here in the Forum where he found that BB theorists weren't being so careful.

But "breakdown" at singularities is an informal manner of speaking. The equations are inapplicable for direct measurable quantities in such regions -- they didn't "break" -- and may still provide useful information of kinds of local rates of change while pointing to the need for further information. And integrations over regions including singularities can still result in valid and useful results.

[Arnold 0]

What bothers me about the whole concept of "size" of the universe, is the yard stick of measurement. What also bothers me is the yardstick of "time" (speed of light) under these circumstances. Just how long does it take for light to travel the width of a universe the size of a foot ball?

Usually what is referred to is the size of the known universe as observed.

A lightyear is a unit of distance, not time. It is the distance that light travels in a 'vacuum' (index of refraction = 1) in one year, which is approximately 186,000 miles/sec * 60 * 60 * 24 * 365 = 5.9 * 10^12 miles = 5,900,000,000,000 miles.

The time in fractions of a second it takes for light to travel the length of a football is the length of football as a fraction of a mile/186,000 miles per second.

I still don't get it. Regardless of the "size" of the universe, doesn't one need to have some yardstick "outside" the universe to speak of size? IOW the idea of "size" makes no sense. Small in comparison to what other aspect of existence I ask?

It is true that a light year is a distance. But it is also a measurement of of an event - motion. We know that if light has traveled 186000 miles, what we regard as one second, has elapsed. Since light is supposed to be the only constant, then it must have taken very little time to travel the full distance of this so called 'small' universe. Are we correct in assuming light speed was as we know know it, in the different gravitational conditions billions of years ago?