The Chest of Time

In 1922, the Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann predicted from General Relativity that the Universe should be expanding. In 1929, Hubble’s measurements of the redshift confirmed this prediction. Eventually astronomers concluded that about twelve to fifteen billion years ago the Universe was in a state of infinite density and zero size; this is the Big Bang theory referred to earlier in this chapter. So we might ask the simple question ‘What was there before the Big Bang?’ Astronomers, however, showed that the entire Universe, including time and space, was created in the Big Bang, and because of the extremely high density of matter at that instant, the gravitational force was immense and the space-time was curved, or encapsulated around the point from which the Big Bang was ignited.

In physics and modern philosophy, descriptions of the Big Bang often assume that a first event is also a first instant of time and that space-time did not exist outside the Big Bang. But it is not clear if it is correct to call the Big Bang an ‘event’, because events must have space and time coordinates, but space-time started with the Big Bang itself. However, for the first time in science there is a mathematical description of the ontological relation between time and the Universe. We shall see that this description is in good agreement with Ibn al-Arabi’s own views on time (section II.3).

However there are serious difficulties in defending the Big Bang’s implications about the Universe’s beginning. Current theories don’t have any claims as to what might have happened before the Planck era (10-43 second after the Big Bang). It is expected that the theory of Quantum Gravity might provide information about that, and it may even allow physicists to speculate on what caused the Big Bang. But until now this area remains solely in the domain of theological and metaphysical speculation.