Davies & Gribbin (1992: 135):
The big bang implies the appearance not merely of matter and energy, but of space and time as well. The bonds of gravity marry spacetime to matter; where one goes the other must follow. The big bang is the past extremity of the entire physical Universe, and marks the beginning of time; there was no "before". This perplexing concept was long ago anticipated by St Augustine, who maintained that the world was created 'with time, not in time'.
Generations of philosophers and theologians have argued about the meaningfulness of a creation 'with time'. Such an event must be without prior cause, for causation is itself a temporal concept. … But modern physics, specifically the quantum theory, has thrown new light on the relation between cause and effect, cutting across the old paradox of what caused a big bang for which there is no "before".
Blogger Comments:
From the perspective of the General Theory of Relativity, space and time are the dimensions of the Universe: the four axes of space-time along which the location and extent of phenomena can be measured. What 'begins' are the phenomena that afford such measurement.
From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, processes may be self-engendered or other-engendered. However, the beginning of the Universe can only be self-engendered because, by definition, the Universe is all inclusive.
Quantum Theory, as interpreted through Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, provides the means of understanding this self-engendered process as the process of instantiation, whereby potential becomes actual. In this view, the beginning of the Universe is an instantiation of potential.
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