How did the world come to be?

Big Bang or Creation?

There is probably no more natural and yet more 'radical' philosophical question. In truth, it was asked much earlier than philosophy, let alone science, was born. Ever since people began to tell themselves various stories, myths called cosmogonic myths emerged, in which various deities communed with each other to give birth to heaven and earth and everything that lives on earth. These deities were usually associated with the sun, the moon and the earth. All over the world, the deities or spirits of these three most important celestial bodies interacted with each other in various configurations. The Polish word for moon (“ksiezyc”), meaning "son of the prince", reflects the old myth; the "prince" in question here is the sun! Usually, people considered the personified Moon to be a child of the Sun, and could not quite decide whether it belonged more to ours or to 'that', higher world. The philosophers eventually decided that it belonged to ours, however, and divided the world into a "sublunar" world (where everything falls from top to bottom) and a "supermoon" world (where everything goes round and round). A distant echo of this Aristotelian division is the separation of astronomy from physics, which still exists today, and the duality of the latter in applying separate theories to objects of 'terrestrial' (including the moon) and 'cosmic' dimensions.

There were, however, also deities that were more abstract, so to speak, such as the Greek Kronos, or Time. The vision of this archaic deity conceals an important idea, namely that the creation of the world sets in motion the course of time or is conditioned by time. Is time something 'before' the world, somehow 'older' than the world, or is it something that is born together with the world? If the latter, where did time come from? And if the former, how could time itself exist? What was time? The emptiness and nothingness itself? After all, time cannot be comprehended without movement!

It can be assumed that the Greeks were asking themselves these questions even before Thales of Miletus, who is considered to be the first philosopher. However, probably even earlier, some three and a half thousand years ago, the Egyptians, and later the Persians, Jews and other peoples of the Mediterranean, began to imagine the creation of the world in the image of the work of a “craftsman.” Every product of human hands has an author, or creator. So why not think of the whole world as just such a 'total' product of a divine craftsman who conceived or planned the world and then 'created' it? This was greatly helped by the process described by the famous historian of religion Mircea Eliade of 'forgetting' the ancient heavenly deities, who, after many centuries, became abstract, i.e. detached from concrete imagery, but at the same time 'old' and therefore 'first'. Thus, they were perfectly suited as the 'only' and most powerful deities. At a certain point, every people on the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean wanted their deity to be the most powerful, and all others to be so thoroughly defeated by them that they could even be said to 'not exist'. And a powerful and singular deity is perfectly suited to the role of creator of the world. Monotheism and the creation myth work well together.

The creation myth has many versions, depending on which solution to the fundamental metaphysical problem its creators leaned towards. For example, one can imagine that the omnipotent Deity, living alone and eternally, wanted someone else to be able to enjoy Him as the Supreme Good, and therefore conceived of creating a world and people who would strive for union with their Creator. The world, then, would be the work of the free will of the one and only omnipotent Deity and would be created out of nothing. With such a variant, it is still to be resolved whether, before creation, the Deity lived in time or in the extra-temporal 'eternal now'. The latter solution has so far been more popular. Unfortunately, imagining the creation of something out of nothing is difficult, and besides, the question of where an all-powerful Deity such as Aton, Yahweh, Ahura Mazda, God or Allah came from remains in force. All these 'One Gods' created the world, but first they had to create themselves. This sounds rather ridiculous, so one would rather have to consider that they existed eternally. Only that such eternal existence can be attributed to the world itself, and then the need to imagine a great Person who invented and created the world would fall away altogether. For the eternal existence of the Creator is no less mysterious than the existence of the world itself.

It is not very fitting to get rid of the greatest Deity to whom the whole people pray, so, having discovered that explaining the existence of the world by the "creation" of it by a Deity, only shifts the problem to that same Deity, ordering one to ask the question of its origin in turn, wise men came up with the idea that both the creator and the creation would be eternal. One might even say that this idea marks the boundary between mytho-religious and philosophical or metaphysical thinking. Well, just as one can say to oneself that the deity exists by itself and in a necessary way (it cannot not exist), one can also say that together with it, the world that emanates from it also exists. Both the deity and the world are thus eternal and necessary. The question of the origin of the world is therefore misplaced and naïve. The world did not come into being at all, and to imagine that, since it exists, 'someone' must have 'made' it is childish. How is it possible to justify this theological-metaphysical view and yet solve the riddle of the world's origin by denying that it ever 'came into being' at all? It is simple, yet brilliant. Well, it is sufficient to recognize that the deity has the nature of the intellect and is at the same time perfect. Thus, it is the highest good and acts rationally. It is not guided by the whim of the will, which, unlike the intellect, is not quite perfect (because it is not necessary - it can be one or the other). So since the Deity is the Intellect, it created the world 'eternally'. In other words, the world exists necessarily, and so does the Deity. It would be ludicrous to imagine that first there was a perfect Deity and then it brought forth the world. For what would it have been before there was a world? Should it have been stuck in imperfection, waiting until it came up with the idea that it would be more perfect to co-exist with the world?

This solution in general derives from Parmienides and the Eleian school (5th century BC). Its great merit is not only to solve, or rather to invalidate, the riddle "what was there before the world was created?", but also "out of what was the world created?". For with this "out of what" there was a great problem. "Out of nothing" (as Christian metaphysics proclaims) is an incomprehensible thing. How does this "nothing" exist? What does "out of" mean in relation to the "material" that is NOTHING? A half-solution to the riddle was the concept (originating with Plato and developed by Aristotle) of so-called first matter. First matter is a derivative of the concept of chaos, or formless primeval being–creation consists in giving it form. This process is beautifully described by Plato in his dialogue 'Timaios'.

From Parmenides to Spinoza, philosophy has reworked all variants of the creation of the world or its eternity. Of course, the idea that the Deity eternally exists 'parallel' to the world leads to the dangerous notion that actually the absolute and the world are one. This is why Spinoza and his ilk had serious trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities, who saw such a position as crypto-atheism. But that is another story.

Well, now let us jump to our own times. As is well known, the question "where did the world come from?" is most readily answered by science with the somewhat humorous phrase "there was a big bang!", or Big Bang. This scientific theory has many variants and raises many questions. But nothing new under the sun! Reflections on what the phrase "before the Big Bang" might mean are very similar to philosophers' age-old reflections on the eternity (timelessness) of the Creator and the status of time as something that came into being (or not) together with the world. The physical 'singularity', which is the point at which the 'Big Bang' process begins, provides an opportunity for physicists to ponder the infinite–much in the same way as the philosophers of old, who saw infinity concentrated 'at a point' in the Absolute (the Deity understood philosophically). There are more analogies, by the way. And the most important is that modern physics tends towards a theory similar to the old metaphysical conception, seeing in the Absolute the source of reality located beyond it, while imagining it as something like a point rather than as an infinity. It will be interesting to see whether the competing philosophical concept, equating the Absolute with the world, will one day be reflected in physics. According to this concept, each moment is like a new 'creation', and nothing that has existed or will exist is less real than what happens now. For time is a spotlight that illuminates a cross-section of reality rather than a depth from which everything emerges (as from the coming future) and falls back into it (that is, into the past). Either way, physicists are treading on the heels of metaphysicians!