Being and Becoming |
Modern cosmology often presents itself as the most triumphant extension of physics. It has traced the history of the universe from fractions of a second after the Big Bang to the formation of galaxies, stars and planets. Yet beneath this empirical success lies a persistent and unavoidable metaphysical tension - one that no accumulation of data has dissolved.
This is the tension between understanding the universe as a timeless structure governed by invariant laws and a universe understood as an unfolding process shaped by time, change and history. Is the universe a 'complete being' or is it still 'becoming'?
If the universe is a 'complete being', unchanging and stable, there can be certainty regarding the laws of physics upon which everything operates. But if it is in the process of 'becoming', its shape, mechanism and the very firmament of its structure may be undergoing change, which would, render all discovered laws of physics temporary and revisable.
At first glance, equations of physics that describe spacetime curvature, models that explain cosmic expansion, and simulations that reproduce large-scale structure assures us of the triumphal success of physical cosmology. However, this confidence dissolves once we ask more fundamental questions – What is time in cosmology? What does it mean for the universe to "begin"? Are laws there prior to the universe, or emergent within it? These are the questions that question the very conceptual framework through which physics itself becomes intelligible; these are the questions of metaphysics.
This tension between Being and Becoming was recorded in early Greek philosophy. Parmenides presented reality as timeless, unified and........