Abstract

The absurd idea that the universe exploded out of nothing is a common-place among today?s mathematicians, cosmologists, astronomers, and physicists. Cosmology has become cosmogony, the dubious study of the ?origin? of the universe. The entire universe is being treated conceptually as a ?system;? a finite, isolated entity. We have reached an intellectual dead end. How do we get out of it? My new book, The Scientific Worldview: Beyond Newton and Einstein, shows the direction we must take. Mere calculation and additional rose-colored observation will be to no avail, for the persistence of the Big Bang Theory (BBT) is rooted in the perpetual philosophical struggle that underlies our understanding of the universe and our place in it. In philosophy, as in science, it is necessary to begin with assumptions. One cannot travel to the end of the universe to prove whether it is infinite or finite. To begin with the assumption of finity, as mathematics and the BBT demand, is to end with finity. However, if one chooses the philosophical alternative, infinity, then the irrationality perpetrated by the BBT disappears and cosmology becomes legitimate. We are left with an eternal, infinite universe that, as David Bohm maintained exactly 50 years ago, can never yield complete equations for even one phenomenon. The Scientific Worldview describes how this universe works via the universal mechanism of evolution, ?univi-ronmental determinism.? Univironmental determinism is the simple proposition that what happens to a portion of the universe is determined by the relationship between the infinite matter in motion within (the microcosm) and the infinite matter in motion without (the macrocosm). In the scheme of things, the BBT is pre-Copernican and symptomatic of the myopic worldview held by society at large. The BBT cannot be rejected without rejecting finity.