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How do gnostic physicists expect to find out how the universe came into existence by studying it?

  • To the question of "Why is there something instead of nothing?" physicists usually respond with "We don't know. But we are working on it." For example, they say this in discussions on creationism. But given that studying the universe can only tell one about the universe, how can you expect to learn where it came from & how it came about, etc by studying it? I am just looking for a consistent way of thinking in which this is just possible. Of course, you can't know something until you know it. But how the hell can it even be possible using science (not that I am suggesting anything else)? If the universe, by definition of being everything that exists, does not carry anything (e.g. information) within itself from outside or before itself, then how can one expect to find out where the universe came from by studying it, which is looking inside it? What exactly are (gnostic) physicists thinking?

  • Answer:

    I had a hard time telling what you meant by the question until I read the your discussion in the comments.  Your definition of a gnostic physicist is: a physicist who believes we can answer questions like, where did the universe come from, how did it come into existence, etc. Reading from your comments I see that you have doubt that physics can ever answer those questions since all the observations come from within the universe.  Part of the answer you supply yourself: "Of course, you can't know something until you know it."  So any answer to the positive can only be speculative. Indeed, any theory that explains those answers would have to be speculative since it could never be tested. Still, there might be some reason to believe it's possible.  Suppose, for instance, you had two theories that both explained everything we could observe in the universe: a simpler one that includes nonobservables that predated the creation of the universe but has no particular anomaly at the creation a more complicated one that has no observables predating the creation of the universe but has some kind of anomaly at the creation Would it be unreasonable to say the first one is more satisfactory than the second? Quantum physics include variables which can't be observed.

David Joyce at Quora Visit the source

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It's possible that it does contain information from outside.  When the big bang happened, it made a sound.  The sound waves were frozen in the cosmic microwave background and galaxy distributions.  By looking at these frozen sound waves, you can at least rule out what *didn't* happen.  There's a ton of information here. Also, don't use "by definition" logic games to try to understand what happened.  At that point you'll be using English logic to figure out what happened and English is far too imprecise.  You have to use math to describe this, and the English description is a rough approximation.

Joseph Wang

Cosmology is a subset of physics. Not all physicists know or understand cosmology. But, their field has gotten more and more credibility over the years because they have been able to predict measurable outcomes, for example the microwave background, red shift (universe expansion), etc. I don't see any cosmologists saying they can explain "why" anything. They can explain "how," and they seem to have reached a point that they feel they can describe something they call "the beginning." But, nobody is claiming that this beginning is the "absolute beginning of all existence." It's just argued to be the beginning of the "observable universe," and for good reasons. Sure, individual scientists have their own beliefs about creation, but just because Steven Hawking thinks he can argue there's no God, it doesn't mean other excellent physicists and mathematicians are not devout Catholics or Hindus (and they are).

Sulimon Sattari

Most physicists don't spend time thinking about this or qualify as "gnostic" physicists (either be acclamation or be assignment). This is really a question about a specialty of astronomy called Astrophysics. And only a minority of them suggest we can identify the source of the universe. The set of people involved here is so small I don't know why you don't just email them directly at their .edu addresses and ask.

Todd Gardiner

They just expect to roll the event horizon back further in time. Every answered question creates a new underlying question. For instance the Big Bang, inflation, etc are being worked out. But how did the initial conditions for the Big Bang arise ? I think the search for the absolute beginning will always remain elusive. The challenge is to peer back 13.4 billion years and comprehend and understand what happened. Science always ends at some point and some point later philosophy begins.

Jeff Ronne

Maybe you should ask a "gnostic" physicist? Most physicists, of the generic variety, don't actually worry much about this sort of semantic question. Why do "gnostic" Christians expect to learn about where the universe came from by reading the "gnostic" gospels? After all, they are just reading books, which exist within the physical universe. If you've got a better idea for learning about the origin of the universe than by studying the universe itself, I'ld sure love to hear it.

David Kahana

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