Why Is There Anything?
Robert Duncan-Enzmann
Reverend: Why is there anything?
Mathematician: That’s forever unknowable by anyone or anything within and of the universe. Things are States; caused to begin, caused to change, caused then to end. What’s a Cause? A Cause impels transition – genesis of states, their life cycle changes. The Information-Existence and Time-Existence Theorems absolutely limit the extent of what’s knowable. Job 37
Reverend: The God that can be explained is not God. Job: 36:26, 37:5, 23
Mathematician: We agree; I will detail my reasons when we discuss faith and logic. Let’s talk a little about a grain of sand in each chapter. Bring our discussions down to Earth. Genesis: of elements which comprise a grain of sand; with hammers of light upon the anvil of inertial space are worked the silicate garments of God.
Your cosmology has void between Aether and QMs- was nothingness created by God? My model includes aether, QMs, and void. I’m aware that aether and QMs must have structures; perhaps sometime something about these structures will be knowable; however, there will be a substructure. Ultimate reality is unknowable.
As was said in Rome: From nothingness, there can come nothing.
Reverend: Why does the universe cohere? What force holds some objects together and keeps some others apart? Paul teaches in the book of Colossians that Jesus is…“the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created; things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities: all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him, all things hold together.” Colossians 1:15-17. Likewise, the Psalmist wrote, “I choose the appointed time; it is I who judge uprightly. When the earth and all its people quake, it is I who hold its pillars firm.” Psalms 75:2-3. If the Lord were to let loose his grip on the world, all would collapse in chaos.
Mathematician: Note that this chaos is not the void between stars and island universes called galaxies. The sort of nothingness we speak of is that envisioned by the Greek who asked: What would happen if I stuck my hand in nothingness? By nothingness, I mean absolute void, not space of the inertial continuum in which virtual particles appear and disappear, not space which cloaks an electron with a virtual field such that it’s electrostatic potential is never, and can never be, fully expressed.
Reverend: Are duration and extents of all things’ transmissions limited?
Mathematician: As rigorously proven in the Information and Time existence Axioms, durations and physical extents of all things are limited. No thing within and of the substance of the knowable universe can either endure infinitely or have infinite physical extent.
Reverend: You have commented on consistency transcending any knowable causes (causes as defined by St. Thomas and applied to transitions between state spaces); this to me demonstrates a transcendental power that can carry information across infinite space and through an infinity of time.
Mathematician: Yes, this is true, and with this, we have considered the following unknowable: consistency, ultimate-coherence, infinite-extent.
Reverend: Monotheism? For me, it’s an article of faith.
Mathematician: In physics, we demonstrate a single force, it’s simpler.
Reverend: An ultimate single force like monotheism appeals from Scripture in verses such as Romans: 1:20, 1 Cor: 8:6, Col: 1:16, and many, many more.
Mathematician: Best I can offer is a reasonable mathematical model of all forces being varied perceptions of a single force. Yet, it’s only a model. In addition, I can offer an experimentally demonstratable finding that a consistency underlies all events and that why there should be such a consistency can never ultimately be described by men or any combination of men and their machines, either now or in any future.
Wonderfully consistent are the characteristics of elements: O, Si, Na, Ca, K, with perhaps a dash of Fe and other traces giving it color, which together comprise a grain of sand. See: a Gauguin painting from 1897 on which the artist inscribed: D’ou venons-nous: Que sommes-nous: Ou allons-nous (From where do we come: that we are: or will be.)
Reverend: How would you, a mathematician, talk – in a methodical way – about the world, the universe, about us, and ourselves?
Mathematician: I claim nothing original here. These most fundamental of all questions and the ways to address them are millennium – likely tens of millennium old. I’ll proceed based on the excellent capitulation of St. Thomas Aquinas to arrange questions by which to methodically describe the world, universe about us, and ourselves.
Reverend: What, who, where, when, how, and why? Is that what you will say?
Mathematician: Sure, and the archaics: What-to, what-from, what-with, what-for prepositionals. It’s valid to imagine that with the very inception of speech, perhaps among Homo Erectus of ca. 450,000 years ago who built huts, made crayons, carved statuettes, and likely built boats, and certainly among Homo Sapiens (that’s us) well before France’s Chauvet Cavern was painted, reasoned just as we do. So here, based on St. Thomas are questions: What’s a Cause? What’s a Thing? What’s Energy? Does anything endure forever?
I must also add this: We can never explain anything; we can only describe, and to emphasize that we describe rather than explain, I have selected a topic sometimes given to uppity students: Write a composition about something ‘simple.’ Explain everything about a grain of sand. To this end we will do our best to describe – making believe we are trying to explain a grain of sand. Our description will include all of mankind’s sciences and in the last chapter, an illustrative example of a grain of sand will demonstrate why we fail; why mankind only describes never explains.
