061 - Is the Universe Cyclical? - The Big Bang, Penrose, & Hegel

Hegel saw the Absolute metaphorically as a "circle of circles" (SL, pg. 842, Miller trans.).  He also said philosophy itself "forms a circle" (PR, Wood, ed.,  Nisbet trans., pg. 26, ¶2).

Yet religions sees a creation event in our past, and modern science has embraced the Big Bang as the beginning of it all.  The universe is expanding and current theories show an eventual fizzle out into a "heat death."  Nothing will survive.  The end.  Full stop. 

Yet there is another scientific theory, proposed by Nobel prize winning physicist Roger Penrose, that suggests that this is all part of a cyclical process.  From the "death" of the finite universe a state of "infinity" will be reached and a new Big Bang will emerge.  

Any correspondence here to Hegel's circle?  This episode explores.  

Transcript

Gregory Novak 0:01

Hello, this is Gregory This is the cunning of Geist episode 61. Welcome back. The purpose of this podcast is to explore philosophy psychology and science. With an emphasis on the great 19th century philosopher, George William Friedrich Hagle. My central premise of this podcast is that there is more going on here than blind materialism. And that is what I tried to demonstrate in these episodes from a wide variety of sources. Now, I usually begin each episode by saying what I just said that the cutting of Geist is about philosophy, psychology and science with an emphasis However. Is there any link between these three disciplines? I believe there is. And I believe that Hagle provides the The true link. And no, I'm not saying that philosophy trumps psychology. And science. What I am saying is that all these disciplines must join at some level into one whole understanding. And I hope to cover a bit of this in this episode. I know it's a big task. But in what I'm going to cover in this episode represents just one small piece of bringing it together. But I do believe that recent theories in quantum physics brings us so close to the philosophy of Hagle. That the gap is no longer insurmountable. In fact, it may be an easy jump to link the two. That is my take Let me share with you why I feel this way. I'm going to be focusing this episode specifically on a theory developed by physicist. Roger Penrose. It's. Called the conformal cyclical, cosmology, or CCC for Yes. I know it's a mouthful. Let me explain it briefly without getting into the CCC postulates that the universe all in, everything goes through cycles. That we are headed toward a timeless infinity in our future. And this timeless infinity existed in our past is where we come from. And this timeless infinity is what proceeded the big That brought forth time and space, as we know it. And this cycle recurs. Not necessarily eternal recurrence. I'll on nature. Where everything repeats. Exactly again and again, but a cycle from infinity to finiteness, to infinity again and again. And there is the possibility of evolution of advancement of laws developing from cycle to cycle within the finite phase. Now, we've talked about a cyclical universe here before in several episodes. Most specifically in episode 39 and 40. However, in the current episode, I want to focus on the CCC theory proposed by Penrose. And I've not discussed that here before and specifically how it relates to Hegel's philosophy. I believe Penn Rose's theory offers a significant inroad to bridge the gap between Hegel's philosophy and current science. And this theory, the CCC comes from his book. Published in 2010 entitled cycles of time and extraordinary new view of the universe. First, let me summarize what I'm proposing as the link from Hagle to Penrose's theory. And this would be very general. And I'll back it up in a moment. First. I'm combining Hagle system with Penn Rosa CCC. I'm not saying this cycling is something of a go-between from a supernatural world to nature and back to a supernatural Is not something other worldly going on. In fact, as we covered here before in episode 15, I do not believe there was an actual creation event that produced the universe. Now, let me just back up a little bit as a refresher. This is a debated point regarding Hagle system, even among Hagle scholars. At the end of the science of logic, Hagle science of logic. He states that the idea freely releases itself as nature. Some take this to be an actual creation event, not in time, but the moment when time and space nature were created. Others believe such as Hagle scholars, Stephen Holgate, that hay goes speaking here, metaphorically. I believe that actually both interpretations are at And this is what I'm going to present and show. And I believe that the CCC model helps explain how this works. And I'll be establishing this link. Now, hago also says that, quote, but this determination is not issued from a process of becoming nor is it and a transition. And Courtney's talking about the transition from the logic to nature. So he's saying that the idea of both freely releases itself as its other nature. Yeah, this is not a transition or a becoming. So what does It means there is no separation. Between the two, it is all one process. There's never any separation between mine and nature. There is no before. Uh, nature was created. There was no creation event. It's just like a circle has no starting point. This is the way things are. An Eagle shows how this is what nature. The world around us, turns out to be. But what is interesting is that there is the cycling from infinity to finiteness, to infinity. It is not a splitting of mind and nature splitting of infinity. From finiteness. it's not going from mine to nature back to mind. But it's a cycling of mind and nature combined. It's not a cycling of logic to nature and to then to spirit and then back to logic and so forth, mind nature combined undergo a process which reaches a Zenith point of pure energy, pure infinity. And in that state, it loses all of its finiteness. And in that very moment, it freely releases itself once again, into its other, to become finite Because that is what it is in its entirety. The absolute is an evolving circle and it has self-contained. I'm saying this is what the Absolut is in its entirety. It is logic mind or God, as well as nature. And it is the historical March of spirit that produces the cycle is not just a physical process, but a mental one as well. Both. As spirit comes to know itself better as spirit. Now Hagle system combined with Penn roses, CCC is much more than blind materialism. Hey goes, nature includes logic as its underpinning. And this is what Penn roses CCC shows. The CCC model allows the universe to cycle through an infinite state, to a finite state and so forth. Constantly evolving. As one process. Now in each infinite states, there is no longer any mass. So spirit is now one with itself. And here it freely releases itself. Once again to continue its evolutionary cycles nature. With spirit unfolding within. Well, the important point is this. Spirit does not go away after the big bang. This is the key It's not that mind or spirit goes away. And we cycle from mine no mind to mind to know mine. It does not go to sleep. Spirit does not go to sleep. It works through nature to come to know itself better. Once again. Uh, what halal caused through true infinity. And spirit is able to improve its knowledge further. And it can only do this by freely othering itself, into nature and spirit. So spirit at this stage in the finite stage, it exists. Nature allows it to evolve its understanding of itself. And it is this, what is this understanding? That substance is subject and the world out there is actually the world in here. It is one. And identity and difference. And this is really the cornerstone of Hegel's whole philosophy. And this process repeats. This is what's interesting about the CCC model and Hegel refers to it as well, which we'll get And it does. So with the aim of constant evolution and improvement, You know, you see examples of this throughout nature, a tree will shed its leaves and go dormant in the winter. And in spring, you will come to life once again and grow further based on the structure already in place from the previous year, the absolute dissimilar each universal round can build on the previous round. And has that as a foundation. So that is my premise. That's what we're going to be exploring in this episode. Now, let me get into a little bit more of the CCC model. Penrose's conformal cyclical, cosmology, as I've said, as a theory that the universe is in fact cyclical, it goes from big bang to big bang and a never ending cycle. And I said, it's not that the exact same universe repeats as an eternal recurrence, but the physical universe of time and space is born again. And again. What is interesting in the theory is this. That just prior to the big bang and the creation of the physical universe, There was no time as we know it. No space. This is before the great inflation of the universe that occurred right before the big bang, which we've discussed. Since there was no time or space, then it's a kind of infinity. It's not the bad infinity that Hagle references. It's not something that goes infinitely into the past and infinitely into the future, but it's, it's a, uh, a true basic infinity, a state beyond finiteness. Time and space are only known through existing things. And what Penrose is proposing is that before the big bang, there were no things. If there are no things, nothing material, and there's no time. And there is no space. Now, what is key about this theory is that we are headed to that state now. The universe is expanding. We know And it is hypothesized that eventually it's going to expand so much. The matter itself will disintegrate and there'll be nothing left. They call it entropy. And nothing will be left. There will be only pure energy as photons, which a photon is no mass and does not experience time. Now that's all that will be left. It would be a state of pure energy. No time or space. State of complete oneness. And we will have reached infinity once again. This isn't something just in our heads, but it's the reality. It's the state of existence as what, what the future holds for us. That's a long time away, but that's what that's where we're headed. And then this condition will give birth once again to another big bang and the cycle will So we go from a period of infinity to want to find that in this to one of infinity again. But true infinity does not leave us during the finite phase of space-time. And this is so critical in Haydel's work. It is there and it allows us not to accept the final given. and it allows us to go beyond the regular, the routine and the ordinary, ordinary and Hagle. So brilliantly describes this in so many places in his work. We've discussed Hawaii. How Hegel's logic can be seen as logically, prior to nature. And this explains why. now to be precise, your Penrose is not saying that the state. Of infinity. That we have come from, and that we're headed to corresponds to Hegel's true infinity. He's dealing with this in a mathematical physical sense. And Hegel's true. Infinity is requires a finite state for, for the true infinity to go beyond. And what Penn rose is saying that the initial state or not initial, but the state is at that time or that A pure infinite state. And that's what is important. I'm the one who's linking. Uh, science and philosophy here, not, not Penrose he's dealing with at With this as, as a physicist, I'm the one that's, that's saying that this is corresponds so nicely with Hegel's Hegel's project. Nope. I want to get into a little bit more in Penrose's theory in a moment, but let's step back and look at some of the correspondence here to other worldviews and philosophies. The concept of linear time is very much Western. And we've talked about this before. And the concept of circular time is very much Eastern. The composition of the ancient Chinese classic, the Ching is circular in nature. It's foundation is circular. It talks about seasons and, uh, and so And every hexagram will turn into another one. And it repeats. The old Testament concept. Which a lot of our Western thinking is based on is that God created the heavens and earth, and that suggests the beginning. And I think that's why scientists glommed on to the big bang. Maybe, because it suggests a beginning. Um, and certainly our Western science emphasizes cause and effect. That is why children's often say well, who created God? Their minds are programmed from a very early age to think in a left brain manner cause and effect everything. Has a cause. And it must be true going back in time, going and also going forward in However, the east sees things more circular. It's more aligned with the seasons. As I said, the repetition of birth and death. Hagle as a westerner saw that an infinity that stretches back. And forward endlessly is a false infinity. It always contains the finite. It never surpasses it. He proposed a true infinity, which is going beyond the finite, given which we talked back. In episode four. The circle is not a finite There is not a start nor an end in on a circle, but it provides us with a self-contained visual of the eternal path. Of growth and freedom. And I think it's an important symbol. And I think this is what Hagle is referring to. It's very much an Eastern thought. Uh, when he talks about the absolute, then he talks about circles. Uh, circle is, is, is self-contained, but it continues. Now. A little bit more on Roger Penrose himself. He was born in 1931 in England. He stayed in mathematics. He graduated from university in 52 from the university of London. He received his PhD in 58. Interestingly, during this time. And when he was working on his PhD, he became fascinated with the art work of MC Escher and began a correspondence with the artist. Penrose actually developed what he called an impossible triangle and sent this work to Escher. And this work of Penrose's inspired Asher to do two of his most famous masterpieces on a stairway that goes up and some are loops back to the start And you cannot immediately tell how it's done when you're looking at the, at the Please check out Esther's work by Googling Esther stairway and or Escher re relativity. And also, if you're not familiar with that, she's work, please. Look at all this stuff. It's so fascinating. However, let's go back to Penrose. He went on and developed many breakthroughs in physics. Particularly in spacetime diagrams and measurement. He also explored consciousness and even published a book on how the physical laws of the universe cannot explain consciousness. It was entitled the emperor's new mind. In 1989. I picked up a copy of that back then. And it said before he published his book on cycles on the CCC in 2010. And. He postulates that at the, at the end of the universe because of entropy and because of the expansion, all matter will eventually evaporate. All that will be left are photons, which contain no mass. And our timeless, as I said, And the key here is that there's no difference between an infinitely large universe consisting only a photons where we're headed and an infinitely small universe consisting of over only a photons, which proceeded the big bang. Therefore a singularity of the big bang and an infinitely expanded universe are identical. That is the CCC in a nutshell. Just recently in 2020 Penn rose, along with a colleague won the Nobel prize in physics for linking black holes in Einstein's general relativity. So he is not some new age prophet just hypothesizing these things out of whole cloth. He is a very well established physicist This is his theory. Now. Given that though, I must point out that the CCC is very controversial today. It's not universally accepted. And at best it can probably be described as a fringe theory among current physicists. But as we've discussed, oftentimes breakthroughs occur by thinking outside the box and many applaud him for, for doing just And as I said, though, going through his background, he certainly has the bona fide he's to produce such a theory. And. Hegel's system syncs with Penn Rose's CCC model. In a very interesting way. It's it's because Hegel's philosophy. Is based on thought being developing and becoming. His state of infinity. true infinity, even the logic, it's not static. Unmoving. It's not in a time sense, but thought, thought moves, spirit moves. It develops. And mind in nature. Join. In spirit and move together as one and evolve. Eventually to the point of complete infinities is Penrose is suggesting. Where there's no more finite world of time and space. And then the big bang is formed. Once again, we've covered over and over. Now. It's. Many of you are familiar with triadic system and we've discussed it here. So often logic, nature, and spirit, first rational logic of mind, which is timeless. And secondly, it's other pure nature and thirdly, spirit joining the two and evolving through history. Hagle breaks these domains into three parts to explain what's going on, but in reality, they all exist. As one entity is really spirit. Today, unfortunately many do not see spirit, but it is the cornerstone of Hegel's philosophy. And that's why we keep covering it over and over again. And as they say, Spirit's awareness of itself is an historical process. And we've come a long way, but we have a long way to go. The point that I'm making here is that there's only one absolute in this contains mind, nature and spirit. And the process of development of becoming of evolution itself. This is all one. You know, we tend to want to break it down and identify ourselves with as only mind is subject only, or for some body only, but this is not Hagle system. And there's another interesting point regarding the second ago. University. I'd like to cover briefly. and this has to do with an idea we touched on before It, This whole process. in fact may include the laws of nature evolving and growing. Lee Smolin who we discussed in episode 40 has speculated in this possibility of cosmos that cycles from big bang to big bang. And Smolan is coming at this purely from a physical theory, but he is the leading could never a physicist who was written on these issues. Let me quote Smolan and the notion of a cyclical universe in laws that evolve. Cool. So I developed cosmological natural selection to try to give an evolutionary count of this. So that there would be a history back before the big bang in which these numbers could change and evolve through a series of events. Like the big bang. And there could be an explanation akin to natural selection. Just like you want to know, why do people have two legs now as opposed to three legs or five legs or four legs or six legs? There's an evolutionary reason for that. And a certain kind of fitness that has been improved over many, many generations. And similarly, there could have been a notion of fitness of the laws of nature over the course of many generations in cosmological, natural selection. Was an example of a theory of that kind and quote. So that's small and speaking and saying why the laws. Of nature, maybe evolve from epic to epic. we've discussed also how Charles Pierce believed that the laws of nature, in fact evolved. Now he didn't get into the quantum physics in the big bang The small ones. I'm able to draw on as well as Penrose, but the idea was there with, with Pierce as well. Now. Penrose. The CCC is much more detailed than small and speculation. It's interesting. The Penrose even claims to see evidence of previous universes in our current cosmos. So hopefully physicists will pick up on this and study this more in the future. Now we've discussed philosophy and current science in this episode in some detail, but what about the third leg of the stool? Psychology. How does this impact us personally? Well, I believe that CCC combined with Haydel's philosophy shows that there's so much more going on in the universe in blind materialism. And that can give one a very different perspective on life. This shows that life has a purpose, that we are on the same team, team spirit. If you will, and we have a mission, should we choose to accept it, to bring more light life and love into the world? Individualized we'll come and go. Cosmic epics will come and go up. Penrose calls them eons. But spirit remains spirit is what gives us life. And if we choose to listen, it will guide us in what is most important to focus on and accomplish. Now, of course the spiritual path is not easy. It's not bliss, ninny hood. we need to make the effort and of course there'll be failures and setbacks along the When does not build big muscles without strain and effort. But the still small voice inside will guide us and give us comfort that I know. Okay. Let's summarize. I was fascinated when I first heard about Penn Rose's CCC theory because it syncs so nicely with Hegel's philosophy. Hegel is against false infinity. At that time, stretches back infinitely and forward infinitely. I believe he sees the absolute more as a Now the key thing about Penn Rose's CCC theory is that it doesn't just extend. Time backwards, infinitely and forwards infinitely, including the big banks. It's it's a state of timelessness that proceeded our big bang when there was no time or space is just infinity. And this is exactly the same state that we're It's not part of a sequence. So we have timelessness behind us and we have timelessness in our future. These states are in fact the same. It was between these timeless states stays space-time appears. And in each of these timeless states, mind God's spirit comes to know itself and improve things. And then. When it comes time. And when it reaches timelessness again, the spirit will freely release, suffer another round to continuous advancement. And there exists the possibility for continued evolution for improvements in spirit, coming to know itself. Through this process. So. Let me conclude with two quotes from Hagle is a very interesting quotes. First is from the end of the shorter logic of his encyclopedia of the philosophical sciences. Quote, we have now returned to the notion of the idea with which we began this returned to the beginning is also an advance. We began with being abstract, being where we now. Are, we also have the idea as being, but this idea which has been his nature and quote. And lastly from the nature section of the encyclopedia, Hagle states. Quote, the point tends toward a place which is its future and vacates one, which is the past. But that, which it has behind Is it the same time that at which it will And it has already been at the after, toward which it tends it's goal is the point, which is the past the truth of time. Is that the goal is the past and not the future and Well, that's it for this episode. Covered a lot. Thank you so much for listening. And I welcome all comments, all questions, please visit the podcast Facebook page at cutting of Geist. And you can ask questions. You can comment on these episodes. And we can have a dialogue. And I will be listing all the references cited in this episode there shortly. I will also eventually produce a transcript of this episode and posted there as well. I am running a bit behind in the transcripts because they take some work, but I will get Please follow me on Twitter as well. Also at cunning of Geist. And be sure to tell your like-minded friends about the podcast, help spread the word. Feel free to share this episode on social media. This is Gregory Nowak. This is the cunning of Geist. See you next