We have become used to mathematical laws — laws of extraordinary precision — controlling the physical behaviour of the world. It appears that we again require something of exceptional precision, a law that determines the very nature of the Big Bang. But the Big Bang is a spacetime singularity, and our present-day theories are not able to handle this kind of thing. Our expectations, however, are that what is required is some appropriate form of quantum gravity, where the rules of general relativity, of quantum mechanics, and perhaps also of some other unknown physical ingredients, must come together appropriately.
Blogger Comments:
From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, mathematical laws neither control nor determine the physical behaviour it models, just as a map neither controls nor determines the territory it models. In terms of modality, mathematical laws are laws in the sense of modalisation (probability/usuality), not modulation (obligation/inclination). In terms of construing experience, physical behaviour is first-order meaning (phenomenal), and mathematical laws are reconstruals of first-order meaning as second-order meaning (metaphenomenal).
From this perspective, according to General Relativity, a singularity is a mathematical point with no spatial dimensions: the point at which space intervals have contracted to zero due to the effects of mass. Since Quantum Theory models the instantiation of potential, its application to the Big Bang is to model the beginning of the Universe as the instantiation of potential, with space-time as the dimensions of the instantiations.
No comments:
Post a Comment