Chapter 46: Everything

What is everything?  The opposite of nothing. Another person might say that it is the universe as a whole. Everything invokes the notion of existence- defined as the fact or sate of living or having objective of reality; or the world one is aware or conscious of, and that persists independent of one’s absence.

The chapter begins by exploring man. An important question asked by Pascal; “What is man in nature?” “A nothing in comparison with infinite, an all in comparison with nothing, a mean between nothing and everything.” In my interpretation an intersection between nothing and everything. It goes on to show that in logic and set theory “things” are represented in venn circles; one circle, say (a) being humans and (b) representing feathered animals, and the intersection of the two sets is an empty set. But of course, the two sets do not contain everything. There is a set of (a U b)’  which contains everything that is not contained in the sets (a) and (b), which means we can expand our “universe of discourse”- the range of all variables with which are concerned. So how far can we expand our universe of discourse? The expansion of our universe of discourse is limited by contradiction. We cannot expand our universe of discourse to the ultimate without logical contradiction. All that is contradictory does not exist. Everything in itself is self-contradictory, so by this logic, everything does not exist. Yet, everything is at manier times thought of as existence, God, Reality etc.

Taking existence from a scientific point of view: Everything all began with the big bang. The universe emerged from a small point/fireball in space which after a huge explosion produced all matter in the universe; galaxies, stars, planets etc.  Our universe according to John Archibald Wheeler’s vision is one of an infinity of universes that can be regarded as embedded in a space called superspace. This is represented by two particles in a space-time of two dimensions; The particles evolve at the center of their space, dance back and forth until they have expanded to the limits, and then dance back to the center, where they disappear into a black hole. This correlates with Edgar Allan  Poe’s vision  of the universe which combines religious and scientific view of the evolution of the universe. His universe begins with God creating a “primordial particle” and from it matter is irradiated spherically in all directions . The universe then expands, but gravity begins to outweigh the force of expansion and so halts the expansion, and then it begins to contract until it disappears through singularity –a hypothetical point in space-time at which matter is infinitely compressed to infinitesimal volume.  We would expect that by now the expansion of our universe is decelerating but a contradictory discovery of an accelerating expansion of the universe was made by a team of researchers ( Adam Piess, Brian Schmidt and Saul Perlmutter)  who were awarded a Nobel Prize in physics in 2011. If this is true, it changes the fate of our universe and hence everything. That is, instead of the big Crunch (Into a blackhole) the universe will continue getting bigger and bigger. The topic in debate is whether our universe is finite or infinite. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; does this mean energy is infinite? Given that the universe contains the energy (dark energy), can we then say that the universe is infinite?

Everything is not confined to our universe only; beyond our universe lies an infinity of other universes living and dying without there being anyone to observe them and because of this their existence is debatable. Bishop Berkeley mentioned that to exist is to be perceived, and so John Archibald Wheeler goes on to argue that “only when a universe develops a kind of self-reference, with the universe and its observers reinforcing one another, does it exist.” If the existence of both the internal observers and the universe are so essential, how do we claim existence beyond our universe, even far away galaxies which we cannot observe? The concept of observation to prove existence is very crucial. If it were only you and nothing else in the whole universe, how would you prove your own existence?

This topic is a very broad one and the idea of “Everything” can be viewed from multiple perspectives. The topic was very interesting to me and mostly very easy to understand mainly because I am a big fan of the Cosmos and astrophysics. The topic gives an insight on creation and evolution of the universe(s) and prove of existence, that is everything. It discusses the topic from the scientific point of view-(The big bang and blackholes), and also the religious point of view where God is the beginning (creator of everything) and the end (after everything vanishes into nothingness).