(first updated 2.09.2021)

The Big Bang, Quantum Theory, and the Ontological Problem of the Singularity

The principal difference between quantum theory and general relativity is ultimately an ontological one. The ontology underlying general relativity—an ontology generally interpreted through scientific materialism—depends fundamentally on the concept of the singularity.

In its broadest, non-technical sense, the term singular means peculiar, unique, or particular. Physics, however, defines a singularity as a point at which a function takes an infinite value, as in the classical description of a black hole where matter becomes infinitely dense.¹ Yet this raises a conceptual tension:

Why does a term denoting absolute particularity also signify infinite value, diversity, or magnitude?

Intuitively, a singular state should yield only finite, particular determinations, not infinite ones. However, the physical use of “singularity” expresses an absolute particularity—a point where the ordinary structure of space-time dissolves, revealing the limit of material description.²

The Big Bang and Scientific Materialism

The Big Bang theory attempts to explain the origin of the universe by positing an initial singularity as the source of all space-time, matter, and energy. Implicitly, the Big Bang assumes that the singularity, when contrasted with nothing, is something—indeed, the only thing, and therefore everything.³

If one asks the Big Bang model for the cause of this transition from nothing to everything, the answer typically appeals to chance, which is a masked way of saying: we do not know the cause. But chance also implies inevitability: given sufficient time, something must occur. Yet inevitability itself presupposes a reason—a structure or principle pushing toward actualization.⁴

Thus the Big Bang leaves unanswered the essential metaphysical question:
Why is there something rather than nothing?

Two major logical issues follow:

1. Developmental Structure of the Universe

If being arises merely by chance, why does empirical evidence show that the universe exhibits development, increasing complexity, and even recurring singular structures (e.g., black holes, biological life)? These phenomena resemble singularities that continually emerge throughout cosmic evolution, not solely at its origin.⁵

2. The Relation Between Being and Nothing

The singularity must be understood from both perspectives:

• nothing is a singularity for being,
• and being is a singularity for nothing.

To claim that being simply emerges from nothing is logically incomplete and contradicts the physical principle that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed.⁶

Thus, if being is conceived as an “alteration” of nothing, the Big Bang ceases to be a theory of origins and instead becomes a theory of substance—of the nature of the underlying reality that transforms.

Quantum Theory: The Indivisible Singularity

In the science of substance, the apparent paradox between being and nothing illustrates the power of the singularity: all differences must be alterations of an underlying unity.

Here quantum theory diverges sharply from the materialist interpretation of the Big Bang.

Quantum physics presupposes that the fundamental principle of the universe is indivisibility. Any singularity that appears distinct is, at its essence, the same indivisible point—the same quantum unity.⁷

Thus in quantum physics, the singularity is indivisibility itself.

There is therefore no singular “beginning” of the universe. The singularity persists throughout being, not merely at its initial moment. Existence continues through a series of infinite singularities, each one a discrete but indivisible quantum event.⁸

Terrence Deacon suggests something similar: the universe persists not because it emerged from a single singularity, but because it continually regenerates singularities—elementary events or units of becoming that keep the universe alive.⁹

This is a striking conception:
To continue existing, the universe must repeatedly regenerate singularity; the singular is not the origin, but the ongoing condition of being.

Footnotes

1. Penrose, The Road to Reality, on singularities as infinite curvature.
2. Hawking & Ellis, The Large-Scale Structure of Space-Time, on singularities as limits of classical physics.
3. Vilenkin, Many Worlds in One, on the “quantum tunneling from nothing” hypothesis.
4. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Antinomy of Pure Reason, on the cosmological argument and the idea of chance.
5. Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos, on cosmic evolution and recurring singularities.
6. First Law of Thermodynamics; also see Noether’s theorem on conservation principles.
7. Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, on the indivisibility of quantum events.
8. Hegel, Science of Logic, on Being–Nothing–Becoming as continuous singular events.
9. Terrence Deacon, Incomplete Nature, on absential constraints and regenerative processes as fundamental to the physical world.

Whitehead: Novelty Keeps the Universe

Singularity as Novelty

Whitehead argues that novelty is what keeps the universe alive.¹ Singularity, in this context, is novelty—each singular event is the generation of a new factor that preserves the ongoing creativity of the universe.

We take the concept of indivisibility for granted because we do not ask how something indivisible remains. It is assumed that the fact a component is separated from another alone constitutes them as distinct factors, but it is also known in science that there is always an attracting force maintaining an equilibrium between any two repulsed objects.²

Strip the Object to Its Schwarzschild Radius

Recent quantum mechanics shows that every object is reducible to a Schwarzschild radius.³ The Schwarzschild radius solves a very pressing problem the early quantum scientists quickly proposed against the idea of a black hole in nature. Karl Schwarzschild, who was particularly interested in celestial mechanics and the measurement of cosmic bodies, simply could not help but ask—against Einstein’s notion of singularity as the defining function of a black hole—in what sense is it measurable?

The validity of this question is based on Newton’s law of universal gravitation, which states: the gravitational force between two point-like bodies is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.⁴

Gravitation is universal when it describes not only the attraction between two bodies in relative motion external to each other in space, but also when it is fundamentally a quantum definition of gravity, describing how the composition of something maintains itself as a cohesion. The singularity is related to the object not by being outside of it in space (as other objects are), but because the singularity—by virtue of being a constant everywhere at all times and in all things—is the substance implicit in the object as the internal force maintaining a constant self-unity.⁵

The Form of a Singularity

The Schwarzschild radius is a discrete measure of infinitesimal continuity in the thing. The only way to measure the infinite is to conceive it in a finite thing.

We can explain this in the following way:
the darkest object in the universe is known as a black hole. The question becomes: how is a black hole deduced? This is different from asking how it is induced, because empirically we arrive at the knowledge of a black hole by induction. We perceive a particular instance in nature where light is warped and obscured, and we claim that from that obstruction there must exist a black hole disfiguring the gravitational pull of the objects around it. A black hole is defined as a point of energy where light is absorbed but cannot escape.⁶

The question of how to deduce a black hole begins with taking any particular object and looking for the densest point of energy within it. This means that all the energy of the object can be compacted into that point—what we know as the Schwarzschild radius. This idea makes the concept of a black hole universal to all objects; in other words, each object has its own “black hole.”

If we take any object and make it “darker” by eliminating its colour—meaning the energy in the form of light from that object is absorbed and compacted into its smallest and densest point, the Schwarzschild radius—the object becomes deconstructed or deduced. The first layer would be to strip away the light reflecting off the matter perceivable to the senses; when that is gone, the light reflected by the molecular structure is absorbed, then the light bouncing off the atomic structure, until finally the object is reduced to its Schwarzschild radius.⁷

Why is the Form of a Singularity a Minute Point Distinguishable from a General Blank Plane?

Commonly, the explanation is that the effect on spacetime is proportional to the mass of the object’s gravitational pull. In qualitative terms, this means that the more details of a thing are conceived, the more it becomes a particular distinguished from the state of nothing.

We see that in a black hole there are infinite possibilities of being described; therefore, it exhibits the magnitude of the most minute infinitesimal object.⁸

If you pick out a black point on a blank black plane, you merely have a general conception versus a specific conception. Any point in the black plane is a particular conception of a black point, so that when you distinguish one from another, you merely maintain the element of uniqueness in the general frame, as the general frame is itself the unique reference point.⁹

Footnotes

1. A.N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, on “Creativity” and “Novelty” as the ultimate categories of existence.
2. Newton, Principia Mathematica, General Scholium.
3. See quantum gravity proposals (e.g., Loop Quantum Gravity, String Theory) treating minimal lengths approaching Schwarzschild radii.
4. Newton, Principia, Book III, Proposition 75.
5. Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory, on the equivalence of gravitational and inertial structure.
6. Penrose, Singularities and the Geometry of Space-Time.
7. Hawking, Black Holes and Baby Universes, on gravitational collapse.
8. Bekenstein & Hawking, black hole thermodynamics, on informational states of singularities.
9. Whitehead’s “extensive continuum” in Process and Reality, explaining regions and abstraction.

String Theory and Divisibility

String theory arises to challenge atomism not by denying the atomic structure but by re-evaluating the idea of indivisibility as it relates to the basic unit of composition. The paradox of physical composition concerns how an indivisible substance can be divisible into distinct components while the distinct components maintain an indivisible substance.¹ Divisibility is not the physical separation of parts from each other, dismembering a whole, because the question of what it means to be a particular entity presupposes the quality of being a continuous thing in itself, separate from another thing not itself. Divisibility means there are two distinct perspectives about the same thing and is identical with a change of conception. When a conception changes, there is a simultaneous change in the physical composition. For example, when perception changes from one object to another, there is a change mediating between the physical compositions of the objects that is maintained constant for the sensible faculty.²

The difficulty in distinguishing how a change in conception constitutes a change in physical composition arises because a conception does not merely disclose an object within a certain form; the form of the object is also content for the conception. In the latter case, if we take the conception itself as its own independent object, then we have no external form disclosing it, but only what is simply the self-happening of the conception.³

A conception is the proper relation between a form and its material substratum, but this is far more complex than a static abstraction for a perceiving faculty. A conception is an unstable dynamical activity maintaining a consistent relation. This must be taken more fundamentally than the appearance of a stable observation from a sense faculty to an object, because their congruency is explained by their mediating relation—which itself requires an explanation of whether it is stable or not. If we say that an object takes up a dimension in space, this presupposes that space itself is a conception from the object and is a form of it. We normally apply object to space, but space itself qualifies as an object. What we take as a principle is therefore a complexity of objects making up nature.⁴

Points, Relations, and Dimensions

An acute triangle is the conception of the relation between three points. We may ask: what is each point in the relation a conception of? The relation between the three points is the triangle, but what are the points themselves as parts of the relation?

The latter question is more difficult to answer because:

1. a point is first a self-relation, meaning it has no particular relation but is a determination for a relation; and
2. when found as a part forming the whole of a relation, a point is the dimension disclosing the whole of that relation.

This means that each point used as a part contributing to a whole is itself the whole of each part.

The interesting informal definition of “dimension” is “the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it.”⁵ For example, a line has a dimension of one because only one coordinate is needed to specify a point on it. Normally, a point is one dimension in a triangle, but the triangle as the whole relation of three points is itself a dimension within each of its points.

A point qualifies as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point because it is a circle that discloses not just any point but all points. The line is the continuity between one point and another, but it is this relation because it is the potential for the point being everywhere along its spectrum. Thus, the length of a line between two points discloses the whole potential relations formed by the connection of the points.

Take the form of the alternate segment theorem:⁶
What we see here is an abstraction of what each point on a line discloses as the conception of its relation. A is one of the points forming the triangle within the circle, but the circle discloses what is happening inside each point forming it. Implicit in each point forming a triangle is the form of the triangle. This is what we mean by dimension within dimension.

The Observer as a Physical Principle

The broader application of the term observer—not limited to human observation—pertains to the quality of form disclosing a certain kind of composition. For example, when we have a cluster of galaxies, this is a conception of a multi-complex form pertaining to each galaxy.

In theoretical physics, the involvement of the observer in the phenomenon began as an innocent rule for avoiding error—to recognize confirmation bias and remain impartial when deriving an objective fact about physical phenomena. The observer making the analysis is involved as a variable and must be aware of the degree of influence they have on the nature of the phenomenon under investigation.

The concept of the observer quickly developed into something more fundamental by shifting focus away from the subjective errors of the individual and toward investigating the implicit structure constituting a shared experience between observer and phenomenon. The scientific inquiry into what it means to be an observer extends to the equivalent philosophical inquiry into what it means for an object to have an essence.⁷

Early theoretical physicists speculated that there seemed to be a quality of indifference inherent in the physical composition of a definite object. Unlike space, which is passive and bent or warped by the gravitational pull of an object, this null quality indivisible from the object acts against the physical composition of the object by maintaining its form. The capacity to remain impartial is not merely a human intellectual virtue but an inherent physical component disclosing the composition of an object. This becomes the question of “dark matter,” a substance affecting objects without clear indication of being affected by them—unlike space, which is altered by objects.⁸

Singularity and the Search for Pure Being

Scientists like Einstein located semblances of this “dark stuff” somewhere in the universe with the early simulation of a black hole—whose active gravitational force supersedes any object around it. The paradox of the black hole is that its size is so massive it affects the largest bodies in space, yet its effects are also prevalent among microscopic matter. For this reason it was given the title of a singularity.

The notion of a singularity introduces a scientific paradox because the value of one—a point—is identical with the value of infinity.⁹ The issue is not that each object exhibits the measure of a single quantity, but that the value of “one” is not a secondary attribute attached after a diversity of things; instead, the presupposition of diversity is that all things are reducible to the same principle.

In the early 19th century, the empirical task was to locate singularity among all degrees of magnitude. For example, when an object is removed from the place it occupies in space, does a corresponding effect remain that is unaffected by the removal of the object?

When the total composition of an object is filtered out, there remains—behind the scenes, more fundamental than the space and time the object occupied—a potential energy devoid of qualities. The only quality that remains is what the old metaphysics called the general principle sought in nature: pure being.¹⁰

The ancients attempted to find pure being by locating it externally—in fire, air, ether, etc. They never found pure being by locating things from the outside; instead, they derived the basic elements that held the more primitive forms of energy, which came closer to a conception of pure being. From the pre-Socratics to the early modern period, science engaged in a gradual deconstruction of the physical world, driven by the unconscious intuition to uncover pure being in nature.

Modern science in the early 19th century indirectly proved the philosophical notion of pure being with the discovery of dark matter, but rather than being a step toward development, it resulted in an intellectual regression. Science neither knew what to do with the fact of pure being nor how to understand it.¹¹

Thus, science reached a developmental impasse. Since the time of Einstein, despite rapid technological advancement, there have been no radical developments in theoretical physics. Only with the recent developments of string theory starting in the 1980s have we seen a revival in the progression of theoretical physics—though at a much slower pace.¹²

Footnotes

1. For the classical paradox: see Parmenides, On Nature; Democritus’ atomism; and the modern critique in Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy.
2. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, on the interchange between conception and intuition.
3. Husserl, Logical Investigations, on the self-givenness of intentional acts.
4. Whitehead, The Concept of Nature: “Nature is a complex of relations.”
5. Standard mathematical definition of dimension; see Euclid, Elements, Book I; also modern topology.
6. Euclid, Elements, Book III, Proposition 32.
7. Bohr, Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge, on complementarity and the observer.
8. Zwicky, “On the Masses of Nebulae and of Clusters of Nebulae” (1933), the first inference of dark matter.
9. Penrose, The Road to Reality, on singularities and infinite curvature.
10. Aristotle, Metaphysics Book IV and XII, on being qua being.
11. Einstein’s correspondence on the cosmological constant and “unobservable matter.”
12. Green, Schwarz & Witten, Superstring Theory (1987), on the revival of fundamental physics.

Observer Principle Guides Uncertainty to Construct Reality

A circle appears to be one object, but it is really the possibility of a set of distinctly acting objects, such as points and lines. A circle therefore discloses the potentiality for a set of distinct forms.¹

A circle is an infinite set of possible forms representing a single form. The single form that a circle is discloses an infinity of other discrete forms and therefore constitutes an uncertainty principle, where the possibilities of forms lose their distinct shape and only exhibit a general relation.² Implicit in the quarks making up the proton and neutron are the so-called “strings,” which are indeterminate “vibrating” passages of nature.

Strings are an abstraction of an undifferentiated form disclosing an indeterminate number of potential distinct objects. Among the infinite number of possibilities is an object that was able to remove itself from the relation and stand independently of the indeterminate process as an indifferent object. This is called the observer principle. One point forming the circumference of the circle was able to leave and descend to the centre of the circle. This is called the singularity in physics.³

A black hole in nature is a purely generative mechanism: it takes in energy and spews it out, and this seems completely chaotic and constitutes the element of randomness in the world. But implicit in this chaos is a certain quality.

The observer is the ordering principle that constructs a particular object following the laws of logic; it determines chaos into a logical narrative. As it left the circle and went down to the centre, it traced behind it a line forming the circumference—called the radius—which is the uncertainty principle. This line is the abstraction of an indeterminacy, a “string.” But now, instead of being completely random, it is guided by a singularity. Physics claims that things fall toward a singularity due to its gravitational pull, but this is no different than saying that it determines matter through its force—it is still a form of determination.⁴

The reason why the singularity has the strongest gravitational pull is because it drags with it all possible measures of mass that constitute the sum total of all possible things implicit in the indeterminate state.

The observer principle defines the singularity as the force of determination. The observer is an inevitable part of the universe because among the infinite and indeterminate possibilities there is one possibility with the power of self-determination, which took its first step outside the indeterminate state and now guides it, abstracting from it actual definite objects to construct a reality. The proof is, by definition, its self-evidence. In other words, the fact that it takes control of itself is proof of its self-evidence.⁵

This singularity is not a “thing” in the sense of an ordinary object; it is also an ideal form, like the circle, but of consciousness. As the singularity falls to the centre of the circle, dragging behind it the line of the radius—which is simultaneously an extension of the circumference—it abstracts the indeterminate state of infinite possibilities into determinate particularity. The singularity is therefore the form of the motion of acting in a self-determined manner. Because it is at one point on the line, it is every point of the line.

The process in which the observer principle—where a point from the circumference develops independence and goes to the centre, guiding behind it the line segment from the circle—is a universal process. This means not only that it is the most general process, describing the form of the universe, but also that it describes the process of each particular object.⁶

The complexity arises because each particular object, from its own point of view, forms the centre of the universe by having a singularity as the point toward which everything leads. But since this feature is numerous, there are competing forms, and this constitutes the general state of nature. Each particular object has the singularity reaching a particular limit within it, but the singularity in objects continues to push the boundaries of its limits.

The idea that each single object is a point that can disclose an infinite number of objects is described by the notion of zero-point energy. How can you fit a universe within a grain of sand? This is the question of zero-point energy.⁷

(Singularity is the zero-point energy.)

The singularity is not an object, and so it is not inside each object as a body contains an organ. Rather, the singularity is that to which the object is reducible and is therefore simultaneous with the object in every way. At this point we reach a contradiction about what a singularity actually is: it is the shared feature of objects, yet it simultaneously maintains each thing as distinct. The fact that the singularity is what objects are reducible to can appear to be a dead end because all objects become routes leading to the same nullity, which is either unexplainable or taken as the sum of possibilities of each object.⁸

The infinitely long stream of bubbles is because the continuity of each discrete point has the potential barrier to impinge on the other.⁹

Footnotes

1. Euclid, Elements, Book I, on the definition of a circle as a locus of points.
2. Heisenberg, Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik (1927), introducing the uncertainty principle as indeterminacy of simultaneous determinations.
3. Schwarzschild, “On the Gravitational Field of a Mass Point” (1916), first derivation of a singularity in Einstein’s equations.
4. Penrose & Hawking singularity theorems, showing gravitational collapse toward a point of infinite curvature.
5. Descartes, Meditations, on the self-evidence of the cogito; also Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations on self-givenness.
6. Whitehead, Process and Reality, on the universal process of becoming.
7. Planck, Vorlesungen über die Theorie der Wärmestrahlung (1914), introducing zero-point energy.
8. Spinoza, Ethics, on the paradox of substance as both one and infinitely expressed in modes.
9. Feynman, Quantum Electrodynamics, discussing point singularities and vacuum fluctuations.

Eternal Cyclic Universe Theory

There already exist theories today that explain and elaborate the notion that scale, or rather size, is not an ultimate factor in the fundamental operations of nature. The CCC theory (Conformal Cyclic Cosmology) claims that when the known universe emerges out of a singularity point, that singularity point is found as the limit of an infinitely expanded universe.¹ In other words, when a universe expands enough, it reaches a point where its expansion is identical with a singularity that characterizes the smallest and most dense point. As the universe grows larger and colder, that state moves toward a small and hot universe.

This can be taken literally to mean that as the universe becomes the most expanded and the coldest form, a certain length of time has passed, and a certain development occurs where it reaches the smallest and hottest point. This interprets the theory in purely quantitative terms, because we do not explain what causes the transition to the smallest singular point and then the expansion into infinitely large scale. However, the CCC theory precisely demonstrates that the development of the universe is moving toward the most particular and finite point somewhere within it. For example, zero-point energy is the condensation of the maximum amount of mass within the smallest finite size.²

It can be equally said that since the observer is said to be the centre of a sphere, and since there is an infinity of particular observers, and since the universe generally is moving toward this centre, then there is an infinity of universes, each moving toward or collapsing into one from an infinity of particular observers.³

In other words, every observer has a universe collapsing into it.

This paradox can be solved in two ways:

1. All observers are gathered into one single and smallest location, and there is one general universe moving into each of these observers;
2. Only one of these observers—the most particular of them all—or, in the domain of time, the lifetime of an observer equals the lifetime of the universe it is in.

The latter is especially obscure because we say that the universe is much older than any individual being that occupies a short lifespan within it. But this only indicates that there were universes before and after the passing of any particular being. It cannot indicate that there is a single universe we call “the same” that remains after, since there is infinitely occurring change. The universe is never the same. What we observe as large-scale aggregates in space having long spans of time have an equally corresponding long scale away from the observer, which corresponds to infinitely long differences in time. A universe that appears to take a long time to change may have already changed long ago.

This is the contradiction of time.

It may seem that the universe you inhabit corresponds to the reality you are living in now. Your lifespan, in other words, is a different reality than the time of the last era, or the era before that, and so on. What may have happened to ancient men—as they describe in religion or so-called mythology—may not be mythology at all, but may well have been reality. How can we truly confirm otherwise? We only take what appears to be reality in our time—as something unimaginable in theirs—as the standard for judging reality generally.

Problems with Singularity

Seen in this light, science reaches a dead end when confronting the concept of a singularity because, from its empirical standpoint, the singularity appears as a point-like particle, a void in the object, which results in the theoretical presumption that part of a defining aspect of the object is what the object is not. The negation of an object, taken by itself, is presumed to be where the object ends.

The Schwarzschild radius of an object indicates one important philosophical implication: that when a singularity is reached, the extent of that object is reached.⁴ “Extent” is not defined as a point where, once reached, it is no longer extensive. Rather, extent is the full duration or length of something, defined by the wavelength property of phenomena as revealing the total happening of an activity. An extent is a revelation or scale of the entire duration, whereas a point is a particular moment. To say that a singularity is the extent of the object—related to the wavelength nature of the object as its potential state—indicates that a wavelength exhibits an intensive duration, meaning that a point-like particle is at two different places at the same time.⁵

Account Between Object and Void

The wavelength nature of an object, combined with the idea that all objects are reducible to a singularity—meaning that all objects end at the singularity—allows the following proposition: the particle-wave relation indicates an inverse supersymmetry between object and void.

• In the particle state, a singularity appears as a discrete void in space (like a black hole), and objects in relation to it are extended as wavelengths, like a black hole’s gravitational force pulling an object into a continuity.
• In the inverse manner, when a singularity is a wavelength, we see it extended as a tunnel, and objects are maintained as particle-like discrete measures flowing through it.

The singularity is the inherent superposition of the object:

• when an object is a wave, it is extended relative to the singularity as a void;
• when objects are point-like particles, they flow through a wave as quantum tunnelling.⁶

In this latter conception, the singularity is the extent of all possible objects and is their total duration. The conception of a void is derived from the perspective of viewing the object in a particle-like state; whereas if we change our conception and view the object as a wavelength, the form of the singularity also changes correspondingly into a tunnel.

All Objects Go Through the Tunnel as Possible Events

As a particle state, the singularity appears as a void—a passage that connects all the objects together—but in truth, all the objects are connected by moving through a tunnel.

But it is exactly this moment that is adopted by practical science as the quality of potentiality—the potential for change from one thing to another. Whenever science reaches a dead end in thought, Hegel observes:

“When the understanding reaches a contradiction, it looks back into the world for the resolution.”⁷

Because in the world, contradiction is never a dead end but the constant movement of change.

(Insert here the discussion of square metre and inverse-square law which relate changes of force with changes of scale.)

The singularity in an object is its capacity for change into something other. Everything has this capacity—called potential energy—which maintains the reality of an object because the object is the duration of an experience. When the duration ends, the extent of the object is reached, but upon reaching it, because it is a duration, it continues into something other. A knife is still a knife even when unused because it has potential energy—it can still potentially cut. Its potential function alone maintains its existence. Once the potential energy changes, the form of the knife changes as it becomes dull and eventually disintegrates into a different piece of metal. The change of matter is maintained by the void implicit throughout the duration of its alteration.

Going through a tunnel is the experience of events changing in reality. The neurological system of the brain consists of all the potential routes bundled together to form the individual who, at any given time, determines a particular route in life.⁸

The singularity is not found in every object as an exclusive object, but it is what remains when the total mass of an object converges to nothing.

Mini black holes. Every object has a mini–black hole at its centre. All objects are fundamentally spherical; light is their basic substratum. Light itself is spherical. All objects are conceiving each other.⁹

Footnotes

1. Penrose, Cycles of Time (2010) – introduction of Conformal Cyclic Cosmology.
2. Planck, Vorlesungen über die Theorie der Wärmestrahlung (1914) – zero-point energy.
3. Weyl, Space, Time, Matter – on each observer as the centre of a local sphere.
4. Schwarzschild, “On the Gravitational Field of a Mass Point” (1916).
5. de Broglie, Recherches sur la théorie des quanta (1924) – matter waves and duality.
6. Gamow, Zur Quantentheorie des Atomkernes (1928) – first model of quantum tunnelling.
7. Hegel, Science of Logic, Doctrine of Essence.
8. Edelman & Tononi, Consciousness and Complexity – neural pathways as potential routes.
9. Wheeler, “Geometrodynamics” – mini black holes as Planck-scale curvature features.

(Conclusion of Intro) Big Bang: Difference Between Quantum and General Relativity

The main difference between quantum and general relativity is really an ontological problem. The ontology of materialism, under which the general theory of relativity has been cast, depends on the idea of the “singularity.” The singularity, in its non-scientific definition but in its broadest meaning, is defined as peculiarity, and what makes something singular is its particular difference from something other. Physics defines the “singularity” as the point at which a function takes an infinite value, as in the case of space-time where matter is infinitely dense, like the centre of a black hole.¹

The question is: why does a term that denotes the meaning of being singular, alone, or independent, become associated with having infinite, diverse, and multiple value? It would seem, at the particular level, that something in a singular state has the opposite of infinite value, and rather only produces finite and particular kinds of value. But the physical concept of “singularity” has an absolute meaning to it; it defines what it means to be particular at the ultimate level.²

The notion of the Big Bang constitutes, for scientific materialism, the attempt at explaining the origin of the universe. The Big Bang theory assumes that the singularity is the starting point whereby the infinite variety of material forms originate. The Big Bang logically assumes that the singularity, when in nothing, is something. This assumption states that because the singularity is the point that is the inverse of nothing—which itself is something—and because such a being is not a mere thing, but since it is the only thing, it is rather everything.³

Now, if you ask the Big Bang what is the cause of this inversion into everything, the answer is that it is mere chance which initiated everything, which is another way of saying: “I do not know the cause that started everything.” But chance also means that it is inevitable for everything to happen, meaning that given a certain period of time of nothing being there, something eventually comes to be. This does not explain the cause, only that time is a factor in it. In order for it to be inevitable for something to happen, there must be a reason; that something driven toward happening means that there is a cause pushing it forward.⁴

That something and not nothing instead of nothing and not something. This conclusion has many obvious logical problems, but the two main problems it has are these:

1. Developmental Evidence of the Universe

If the existence of being merely arises by chance, why has empirical evidence suggested that the universe has been developmental? Why does the universe continue to change into what seems to be more singular forms of matter? The singularity, and biological life, matches the definition of a singularity in relation to the overall universe; therefore, singularity not only seems to appear at the onset of the universe but continues throughout its existence.⁵

2. The Logical Definition of the Singularity

Second, the logical definition of the singularity must not only presuppose that nothing transitions into being, but that nothing, from the point of view of being, is a singularity, and that being is also entering nothing. To say that being is the singularity of nothing is not only logically incomplete, but also contradicts the most basic physical law of nature: that energy is neither created nor destroyed but only altered.⁶

If the Big Bang assumes, in its explanation of being, that being is simply an alteration of nothing, then it no longer becomes a theory that hopes to describe the origin of the universe, but a theory that inquires into the nature of substance.

In the science of substance, the logical paradox between being and nothing is the power of the singularity: that any nature of difference must only be an alteration of an underlying substance. It is at this point where the science of quantum differs from the materialist doctrine of the Big Bang. Quantum is not compatible with the Big Bang theory because it presupposes that the essential principle of the universe is indivisibility. Any singularity, in contradistinction from an indivisible point, is but the same indivisible point.⁷

The singularity in quantum science is therefore indivisibility itself. In quantum, therefore, the singularity is not only the initiative beginning of the universe, but there is no such beginning; the singularity is present throughout the process of being. What it means to continue existence is explained by a series of infinite singularities. The singularity is therefore the constant condition that maintains the being of the universe.⁸

This is perhaps a startling conception because, in order for the universe to continue, a singularity must be infinitely produced—or the regeneration of singularities is what keeps the universe alive.⁹

Footnotes

1. Hawking & Ellis, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, on classical singularities.
2. Penrose, The Road to Reality, on singularities as absolute limits.
3. Vilenkin, Many Worlds in One, on quantum tunneling and the singularity as “everything.”
4. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, “Antinomies of Pure Reason,” on the insufficiency of chance as explanation.
5. Lee Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos, on cosmic evolution and recurring singular structures.
6. First Law of Thermodynamics; Noether’s theorem on conservation of energy.
7. Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, on the indivisibility of the quantum event.
8. Hegel, Science of Logic, Being–Nothing–Becoming, as continuous singular moments.
9. Terrence Deacon, Incomplete Nature, on regenerative absential processes sustaining existence.