Could wishful thinking guide physicists too?

It is more or less a requisite part of studying any amount of international relations that one should come across the idea of “wishful thinking”. In short, I’d say that this is the idea that our surroundings conform to a false reality that would be conducive to a particular strategy being carried out towards a desired end. Similarly, it can lead us to refute incoming information when it forces us to confront a reality that we don’t want to be true, or that is so entirely inconsistent with our preconceptions that we are unable to consider its veracity.

This goes hand in hand with the idea of incomplete information, which is a typical problem in political systems with few informational feedbacks, often due to an overly assertive leader. The possible result is that false conclusions are reached due to false assumptions that are reflected back when the inquisitor looks out to the world. This may be the result of assuming that reality behaves in some particular way, that it will work the way we desire it to, and that these assumptions seem perfectly reasonable to us, regardless of how they may fail to stand up to what is really going on in the world that exists outside of our head.

To some extent, this is an inescapable problem in every field of inquiry. What I am wondering is if such wishful thinking may have led a particularly famous physicist to a wrong conclusion? The reason that I think it is interesting to take this issue up is that another particularly famous physicist has much more recently used this possibly false conclusion to propose a theory of “cyclical big banging”, if I may be permitted to invent such a term, as an explanation for where the big bang came from. I have been altogether too vague so far, so let me get directly to the topic matter at hand.


As far as I recall, Einstein believed that the space-time continuum was circular. By that I mean that I am lead to believe that he believed that there was some curvature in the universe that essentially meant that if an object of some mass were to continue uninterrupted in one direction for an infinite amount of time, that the this object would return to its starting point. It should be explicit that I do not understand this to mean that he questioned the infinitude of the potential size of the universe. (Perhaps it could have ever further rings of continuum, or some such thing, but in any case, the details are not important for my argument).

Allow me to change tack for a moment and offer some context with a brief outline of some issues with the big bang, what it allows us to explain and a major problem that this theory poses for the universe if it is true.

Upon noticing some particular patterns in waves beaming to the earth, some physicists observed a few decades ago that all the other galaxies in the universe appear to be getting further away from ours. This is the centerpiece of evidence that leads us to believe that the universe started as an incredibly dense ball of matter that exploded into every direction.

Thing is, the further other galaxies are away from us, the greater the difference in this “wave signature”, à la doppler effect, which amounts to evidence that the universe continues its outward spread. This led to the “great cool down” theory, which basically states that the universe is in continual expansion. (The opposing theory being that gravity would eventually be enough to stop this and bring us flying back together, with equally catastrophic consequences… unfortunately, or fortunately, I’m not sure which, it appears that things are already way to far apart and are moving way too fast).

The great cool down is no great secret, but in case it has escaped your attention, this means that as everything spreads further and further apart, the heat becomes more spread out, and we trend towards the theoretical limit of absolute zero, where the inner bits of particles stop moving, at about -273.15C. One final point before continuing is that time is the fourth dimension. This is a very deep statement. It has ginormous implications in terms of the way that the universe can be conceived, but I have absolutely no intentions of getting into any in depth discussion of the philosophical or mathematical implications of relativity (the second of which is beyond me at this point in time anyways).

OK, back to the main point. Einstein proposed that the space-time continuum could be curved such that we may be able to return to the point of origin by apparently continuing in one direction.

Stephen Hawking takes up on this in his ‘Brief History of Time’ to suppose that this would allow for recurring big bangs. The idea would be that everything would continue expanding to the point that space-time curved back in on itself, leading straight from the great cool down back into the next agglomeration of matter/energy, leading to yet another big bang.

Two interesting things that come from this idea: first, that the big bang is the beginning of time for all intents and purposes, since it would obviously destroy all forensic record of what came before it (including, say, another intelligent species which had discovered the secrets of the universe). Second, and similarly, there would be no way to know how many big bangs there had been.


What I particularly take issue with here is that, to my knowledge, there is no reason whatsoever to believe it’s true. The theory appeals to me for a lot of reasons though. Paramount being that, even if all the evidence we see points to a great cool down, I have a far easier time, in a spiritual sort of sense, dealing with the implications of recurring big bangs than a great cool down. It leaves so much more to the imagination. Nature itself, for all its contradictions (perhaps you should read “dynamic equilibria” within ever-changing surroundings, or “constructive tensions” in place of that word), cannot be anything other than what it is.

A recurring big bang leaves plenty of theoretical space for one to suppose that nature has meaning. That nature has a future. That, whatever happens, even if life ends, it can begin again. That there is a cycle. That there is equilibrium. Balance. Direction. Meaning. At the outside edge, even if all religion and theism is nothing more than a confused attempt by human individuals and societies to construct a sense of psychological order within an apparently chaotic reality, that even in the case of the end of the universe, there is always a new beginning.

The opposite of such a hypothesis, of course, would be that nature can have no meaning. That nature has no future. That, whatever happens, when the continuum of life reaches an end, it will never begin again. That there is no cycle of the universe. That the trend to equilibrium means a progression to what is, at the outside limit, essentially pure nothingness.


What I am saying is that, in the lack of evidence, I have to wonder if Hawking’s recurring big bang is nothing but a case of wishful thinking, in the face of the sheer weight of the alternative.
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But, think of a drop of oil in water. Now … just imagine that there was some force that would make it suddenly shoot to all directions in a pot of moving water. Both experience and simple scientific explanations tell us that the oil will eventually rejoin into one drop when surrounded by water. We know that energy (aka matter) is attracted to itself in some sort of way, almost certainly some sort of force almost identical to what we understand as gravity.

Which brings me to the even greater question, which has led many physicists to postulate the existence of dark matter … Is it not possible that there is not some analogy for Van der Waals forces at the macro level? I have no reason to believe this is the case, except that following Lyell’s principle of uniformatarianism, if we have reached such a conclusion at the level of particles, then I would think that some such phenomenon may be at least as reasonable as the postulation of dark matter that is all the rage in theoretical physics these days. The present argument can easily be rejected by simply saying that different laws apply to small bodies (particles) and large bodies (say, stars and galaxies), but I just don’t find that to be an entirely satisfying rejection. If you don’t know what Van der Waals discovered, then don’t worry about it. Otherwise, that’s more than just a bit of food for thought.

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On another note, I have reached a troubling conundrum.

I have spent the last few days in a somewhat of a state of heightened awareness of the fact that everything is made of stuff (i.e., is made of parts). This has brought an enormous sense of liberation, in almost the opposite of the Foucault-ian concept of “docile bodies” which are used by producers in ever-more-specialized ways to better ever-better producers or ever-more-efficient soldiers, etc. Rather, with more of an artisan sort of outlook (perhaps more ‘natural’ for humans, but certainly not more competitive in the evolutionary sense when connecting productive capacity to military capacity at the societal level), it is a sort of liberation, knowing that the ‘things’ around me are all within the realm of possibility were I to wish to cultivate the skill of making any of those constituent things.

The conundrum, however, comes with the shocking realization that nothing really exists. At least, not in the conventional way. I mean, I’ve known the nature of Van der Waals forces since high school chemistry, but a recent discussion led me to some contemplation of the way that (at the atomic or molecular level) material, or mass, that makes up an object doesn’t so much occupy a space, as it demarcates a space that excludes almost the entire probability mass of another object or bit of mass from simultaneously sharing any bit of that space.

Everything is made of stuff, but that stuff really isn’t anything in particular in the first place.

In closing, let me say that allowing common sense and experience to guide choices is about the only sensible thing to do for practical purposes, but it is only one of many ways that we questioning beings have at our disposal to inquire about the reality of nature.