Cosmological Reconstruction
Posted: Mon 15 Oct 2012 5:12 pm
Whist I dismiss the standard cosmology, in common with many in the Society, the case for a 'beginning' seems difficult to ignore, so - I don't ignore it! I won't waste words on Big Bang theory which itself has so upset many thinkers. Initially I was captured by Fred Hoyle's "Steady State" theory but came to realise that it has a glaring weakness. While I share with the great Fred his view that, like matter itself, the Universe is essentially immortal, the presence of change and evidence of the introduction of new features over time makes it seem most probable that a 'beginning' of some kind is an unavoidable conclusion. In this sense a beginning would entail some sort of re-organisation that destroys any record of its past state. How this does, or even can, come about is probably unknowable, though perhaps it is yet another manifestation of universal electric power - your guess...! Thinking about the cosmos in a purely material and evolutionary sense, I saw what had been puzzling me for so long. Where is life in an eternal, un-reforming Universe? Surely life, hugely intelligent life, and evidence of its existence would be, literally, everywhere! From our own experience it seems virtually certain that intelligent life can make a home practically anywhere! If Fred was right - more or less - the relative absence of intelligent life can be only because life in all its forms is a latter-day phenomenon, requiring the creation of special conditions to inspire its appearance. You can only have such latter-day events after there has been a 'beginning'! Since no initial 'beginning' as such is possible, matter being eternal, the solution could be that our Universe is simply the 'latest' phase in an unending succession. This then should mean that the presence of life is a distinct 'marker' in the development of this or any other re-constructed Universe. So, I suggest we are early forms of intelligent life, amongst the first to appear. This, philosophically at least, seems to answer the question we have spent billions pursuing: Where is Intelligent Life? Possibly - as yet - only on Earth. What do you think of these several ideas?