WEBVTT - Order out of Chaos: How to Create a Universe 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:05.880 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.880 --> 0:00:14.560 Works dot com. Hey, wasn't it stuff to Blow your Mind? 0:00:14.600 --> 0:00:17.599 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:19.919 Robert Today I wanted to talk about kind of an 0:00:19.920 --> 0:00:23.840 on topic. So a few years back, I saw this 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:27.200 weird claim in some book or article I was reading. 0:00:27.240 --> 0:00:29.040 I don't remember what it was now, but it was 0:00:29.080 --> 0:00:34.199 this castaway remark about the physicist Brian Green, favorite of 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:36.519 ours here we talked talked about him on the show 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:38.760 for one of the co founders of the World Science Festival, Right, 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:44.559 mentioning the possibility that scientists could create a universe in 0:00:44.680 --> 0:00:48.280 lab conditions. It's kind of an odd thing to say, 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:51.120 so obviously I was intrigued, but I didn't really follow 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:54.000 up on it at the time. It's stuck with me though. 0:00:54.000 --> 0:00:56.320 I kept the is that really possible or is this 0:00:56.440 --> 0:01:00.160 just some funny physicist thought experiment? Is it one of 0:01:00.200 --> 0:01:03.880 those jokes that gets worked out in math? And recently 0:01:03.920 --> 0:01:06.720 I became aware of a new book by a science 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:10.200 writer with a PhD in physics named Za Morali addressing 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:13.400 exactly this question. So the book is called A Big 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:16.680 Bang in a Little Room The Quest to Create New 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:21.200 Universes by Basic books that came out this year, And 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:24.760 this book addresses exactly that question of whether you can 0:01:24.800 --> 0:01:29.440 actually create a universe under laboratory conditions, not just as 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:33.360 a joke, but in reality. And if you could do that, 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:37.200 what would that capability mean for us in our civilization? 0:01:37.319 --> 0:01:39.679 So that's the question I wanted us to look at today. 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:42.559 Is this really something we could do? And if so, 0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:44.920 how would you do it? Yeah? Because this is a 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:48.920 this is such a huge question because we're we're asking 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:52.880 a question about you know, basic cosmology. Like we're talking 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:57.920 about creating a new universe without really having it completely 0:01:58.000 --> 0:02:01.880 boiled at down, how our universe came into being totally 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:03.920 I mean, and of course that presents a very big 0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:07.280 problem for anybody wanting to create a universe in the lab. 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:09.919 Is like, we're not even sure how the one universe 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:12.040 were aware of came into being. We know a lot 0:02:12.080 --> 0:02:14.720 of things about its early history, but we don't know 0:02:14.760 --> 0:02:18.000 the ultimate question of its origin. Yeah. And in terms 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:23.919 of sort of God complex Frankenstein aspirations for the human species, 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:26.040 I mean, we're still working on some of the much 0:02:26.080 --> 0:02:30.399 smaller stuff creating a you know, a rational animal out 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:34.639 of spare parts like that's that alone, is is enough 0:02:34.639 --> 0:02:36.880 of the challenge without getting into the idea of an 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:40.359 entire universe, that is that that springs up at the 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:43.480 snap of the fingers. Yeah, is the civilization obsessed with 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:46.480 the ethics of whether to create robot soldiers and sex 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:50.840 robots really ready to make a whole universe? Yeah? Well, 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:53.600 I don't know, but people have obviously been obsessed with 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:55.960 the origins of the universe since a long time before 0:02:56.000 --> 0:02:58.359 science had anything useful to say about it, right. I mean, 0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:01.280 we we have scientific cosmaal ology now, and this is 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:03.560 the thing that's really just emerged pretty much in the 0:03:03.639 --> 0:03:07.640 last century. But our myths from ancient times are full 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:11.440 of these beautiful creation from chaos or creation from the 0:03:11.520 --> 0:03:15.600 void stories which envision a universe coming into focus out 0:03:15.600 --> 0:03:19.720 of empty space, nothingness, or some kind of other uninhabited 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:23.160 primordial condition, often like an ocean or a sea or 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:25.760 ice or something like that. Yeah. I mean, we've been 0:03:25.800 --> 0:03:29.400 asking the same questions about our universe as long as 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:31.520 we've inhabited it, really, really really, as long as we've 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:34.200 had the the you know, the cognitive ability just sort 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:36.320 of gaze up at the stars and wonder what we're 0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:38.960 looking at, and then how it all came into being. 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:41.360 And one thing I find interesting about all of these 0:03:41.520 --> 0:03:45.760 uh creation out of darkness uh myths is that it 0:03:45.840 --> 0:03:51.160 seems to line up with our individual experience of arising 0:03:51.200 --> 0:03:55.640 from unconsciousness, of waking from unconsciousness. Yeah. Uh, and certainly 0:03:55.640 --> 0:03:58.120 there are there are plenty of creation myths that add this. 0:03:58.120 --> 0:04:01.240 This additional layer of anthropomorphiy is um where that the 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:04.280 universe is made from a body or is shaped like 0:04:04.320 --> 0:04:07.160 a body. Our understanding of the cosmos is like lined 0:04:07.240 --> 0:04:11.040 up with the shape of the human body. Uh. Therefore 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:12.640 it makes sense that we would we would take that 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:16.120 that personal experience of the universe and try to you know, 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:19.680 apply it to everything within it. Yeah, there are lots 0:04:19.680 --> 0:04:21.960 of classic myths. I like that you point that out. 0:04:22.240 --> 0:04:25.320 I think that's a really interesting idea about it, mirroring 0:04:25.480 --> 0:04:29.240 our expansion into the world from a place of darkness 0:04:29.320 --> 0:04:32.000 and unknown. You know, before you were born, it's not 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:34.440 like you were sitting around waiting to be born. You 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:38.120 just didn't exist, or you at least weren't aware of 0:04:38.160 --> 0:04:40.560 anything as far as you know, as far as you 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:43.800 can remember, Now, for all those past lives, I may 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:49.159 have been kings and sorcerers and wonderful creatures. Uh, never mind, 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:51.240 that's a discussion for another day. Yeah, but you're right. 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:54.680 But for the most part in the beginning, there was darkness. Yeah, Like, 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:57.839 that's our personal experience of reality, and it makes sense 0:04:57.880 --> 0:05:01.400 that we would apply that to the osmos as a whole. Now, 0:05:01.600 --> 0:05:03.240 later in the episode, of course, we're going to look 0:05:03.240 --> 0:05:06.520 at the science of the real earliest moments of the universe, 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:08.400 how the universe came to be the way it is, 0:05:08.880 --> 0:05:11.560 and how you might create universes in the lab, if 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:15.080 such an idea has any merit at all. But I 0:05:15.120 --> 0:05:17.000 thought we should actually look at a few of these 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:20.680 mythological realizations about the origins of the universe, because they 0:05:20.680 --> 0:05:23.320 are so fun and so fascinating, and they also give 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:26.440 you a peek into the minds of the ancient people 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:30.440 who pondered this question without any real information to draw on. Yeah, 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:32.080 and plus these will be fun to come back to 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:35.000 as well when we start cracking open some of these 0:05:35.240 --> 0:05:39.520 these scientific views of the birth of our universe. There's 0:05:39.720 --> 0:05:43.400 one piece of Norse mythology literature that I wanted to 0:05:43.400 --> 0:05:46.440 look at that has a great creation out of chaos 0:05:46.480 --> 0:05:49.480 story in it. And this is a piece of Norse mythology, 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:53.400 a literature called the Guilt foggin Ng And so I 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:55.960 just want to read this section from an English translation. 0:05:56.520 --> 0:05:58.919 It's got this king, and this king is talking to 0:05:59.000 --> 0:06:03.200 these these power full beings uh that that are answering 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:06.360 questions for him, and he's asking these probing questions about 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:10.719 the universe. So this king named gang Larry asked how 0:06:10.760 --> 0:06:13.760 were things wrought? Ere? The races were and the tribes 0:06:13.800 --> 0:06:19.600 of men increased. Then said horror, the streams called ice waves, 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:23.120 those which were so long come from the fountain heads 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:26.560 that the yeasty venom upon them had hardened, like the 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:31.000 slag that runs out of the fire. These then became ice. 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:34.280 And when the ice halted and ceased to run, then 0:06:34.320 --> 0:06:38.239 it froze over above. But the drizzling rain that rose 0:06:38.320 --> 0:06:42.400 from the venom congealed to rhyme, and the rhyme increased 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:47.120 frost over frost, each over the other, even into gaininga 0:06:47.200 --> 0:06:53.080 gap the yawning void. Then another one speaks jafenhar geninga 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:56.360 gap which faced towards the northern quarter became filled with 0:06:56.440 --> 0:06:59.800 heaviness and masses of ice and rhyme, and from with 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.240 in drizzling rain and gusts. But the southern part of 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:06.599 the yawning Void was lighted by those sparks and glowing 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:10.880 masses which flew out of the Muspelheim. And then a 0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:15.360 third great ruler speaks and says quote, just as cold 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:19.120 arose out of Niffelheim and all terrible things, so also 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:23.440 all that looked towards Musselheim became hot and glowing, and 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:27.000 the yawning Void was as mild as windless air. And 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:29.720 when the breath of heat met the rhyme, so that 0:07:29.760 --> 0:07:33.480 it melted and dripped. Life was quickened from the yeast 0:07:33.600 --> 0:07:36.760 drops by the power of that which sent the heat, 0:07:37.000 --> 0:07:40.960 and became a man's form. And that man is named Emir, 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:45.640 but the rhyme giants call him Argyll Emir oh Man. 0:07:45.800 --> 0:07:49.560 I really like the the idea of the yeasty venom. 0:07:49.760 --> 0:07:53.840 Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. So it's this freezing and melting 0:07:53.960 --> 0:07:57.040 process which gives rise to the order of the universe. 0:07:57.120 --> 0:08:00.400 In the Norse mythology idea, it is there sense of 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:03.760 fermentation there as well. Just with the couple of mentions 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:06.880 of the yeast makes me maybe I'm there's something that 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:09.920 like beer is central to their vision of the cosmos. 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:15.239 It's frozen beer and venom coming to life, freezing and melting. 0:08:15.440 --> 0:08:19.840 What could be more and more Nordic than that? Alright, Well, 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:22.520 I have I have one here that also they touches 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:25.680 on similar territory. Uh. Actually, I have a couple I'm 0:08:25.720 --> 0:08:29.280 going to read here, and these are both from Chinese mythology. 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:31.520 In Chinese myth this is one of those areas where 0:08:31.560 --> 0:08:34.760 you have multiple different origin stories for the universe that 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:37.160 kind of make the make the make the rounds, depending 0:08:37.200 --> 0:08:39.679 on where you're going in Chinese history and who's doing 0:08:39.679 --> 0:08:41.200 the talking. So it's not going to be like a 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:44.320 single codified myth, right and you you you see this 0:08:44.360 --> 0:08:47.640 in a number of different faiths. You'll see this in Hinduism, 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:49.959 as we'll get to in a bit. But this one, 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:54.920 in particular comes from the fourth century BC um one 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:58.760 of one of a few different Chinese cosmology myths related 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:02.680 in and Barrel's Chinese Mythology and Introduction, and she points 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:07.720 out that these cosmologies are are essentially authorless. Uh, but 0:09:07.920 --> 0:09:10.280 I really like this one because it describes the primordial 0:09:10.360 --> 0:09:12.920 darkness as moist and the same in a way that 0:09:12.960 --> 0:09:17.520 reminds one of a singularity in the beginning of the 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:22.000 eternal past, when all was the ultimate sameness in vast 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:26.760 empty space, empty and the same, All was one, one, 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:31.880 eternally at rest, moist, wet and murky dim, before there 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:35.880 were darkness and light. Oh, that is great, moist, wet 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:39.760 and murky dim. But also I like this idea of 0:09:39.800 --> 0:09:44.560 the original chaos of creation being homogeneity, that there is 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:49.080 a lack of division between things, and that actually and 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:52.400 so that that implies to the emergence of order or 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:56.440 the creation of recognizable objects and structure to the universe 0:09:56.800 --> 0:10:01.320 is in fact a cleaving of sameness into different Yes, yeah, 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:03.360 and and that will come back again when we get 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:06.320 to a couple of Hindu examples. Now there's a there's 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:09.760 another Chinese example I want to hit there, and this 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:13.360 is from hwaian Zoo and early Han work by Han 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:18.320 dynasty prince lu on Uh So. I love the mystery 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:21.679 of the words in this translation. Let's hear it, before 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:25.440 heaven and Earth had formed, there was a shapeless, dark expanse, 0:10:25.840 --> 0:10:29.800 a gaping mass. Thus it was called the Great Glory, 0:10:30.040 --> 0:10:35.040 the way dal first came from vacant space. Vacant space 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:38.400 gave birth to the cosmos, and cosmos gave birth to 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:42.320 the breath, and the breath had its limits, had its limits. 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:45.480 What does that mean? Well, and after this part Yin 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:47.480 and Yang come into place, you get some of the 0:10:47.840 --> 0:10:51.080 you know, the duality that is a central to dalis 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:54.560 Um becomes you know, an important force in the continuing 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:57.120 formation of the universe. So there are sort of limits 0:10:57.120 --> 0:11:01.520 imposed by counterposing opposite. Yes, here's another bit from this 0:11:02.120 --> 0:11:05.080 long ago. Before heaven and Earth existed, there were only 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:08.760 images but no forms, and all was dark and obscure, 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:12.840 a vast desolation, a misty expanse, and nothing knew where 0:11:12.840 --> 0:11:15.920 its own portals were. There were two gods born out 0:11:15.920 --> 0:11:19.360 of chaos who wove the sky and designed the earth. 0:11:19.640 --> 0:11:23.079 And these two gods are the the Yin and Yang forces. 0:11:23.120 --> 0:11:26.840 Interesting again here with the Yin and Yang forces, it's 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:30.240 like we're seeing a division or a distinction as the 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:35.400 act of establishing creation. Yeah. Now, I mentioned the Hindu 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:37.680 models earlier, so I do want to touch on a 0:11:37.720 --> 0:11:41.200 couple of these. So too often we see this trope 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:44.000 of of just order out of chaos right. But but 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:48.680 Hinduism places of value on both properties. So if you 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:53.480 go back to early Vedic ideas about the creation of 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:57.160 the universe, you have this Vedic creator deity UH project 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:00.920 and popt strove to make the uni verse that could 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:04.120 contain both order and chaos, so the energies of the 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:07.920 devas and the asheras. So the first creation was too 0:12:08.000 --> 0:12:11.200 orderly and seemingly too boring. Two uniforms, so they're just 0:12:11.240 --> 0:12:15.640 too much sameness. It's like a fascist universe. Everything must obey. Yeah, 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:17.760 and then uh. And then he creates a second universe, 0:12:17.760 --> 0:12:20.720 but this one was too chaotic, too fragmented. But the third, 0:12:21.400 --> 0:12:25.800 the third was just right, the Goldilocks universe. Just enough 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:30.600 chaos for you, just enough chaos, just enough. Yeah and uh. 0:12:30.760 --> 0:12:33.280 But the thing is this too, Even though you know 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:35.840 he essentially gets it right, there still has to be 0:12:36.200 --> 0:12:40.200 regular intervals of destruction and renewal uh. And that's something, 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:43.199 of course, when we start talking about some of our 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:47.760 modern UH models for the creation of the universe, we 0:12:47.840 --> 0:12:50.800 get into this a bit. The idea that that that 0:12:50.880 --> 0:12:54.800 the there's an expansion and then a contraction of the universe. Well, 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:56.400 in a lot of these things and This is not 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:59.840 to say that these myths were actually onto something. Scientifically, 0:12:59.840 --> 0:13:03.080 I think this is probably largely coincidence or just has 0:13:03.120 --> 0:13:06.880 to do with the the depth of our our ideas 0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:10.520 about how order and chaos work. But some of these 0:13:10.559 --> 0:13:13.480 do mirror modern scientific theories. Like one thing I was 0:13:13.480 --> 0:13:17.400 thinking was about the division or distinction model about establishing 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:20.040 the order of the universe. This sort of mirrors the 0:13:20.080 --> 0:13:23.320 idea of these Grand unified theories in physics, wherein physics 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:26.559 you've got the forces of the universe. Aside from gravity, 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:29.160 you've got the three forces, the strong nuclear force, the 0:13:29.160 --> 0:13:32.559 weak nuclear force, and the electromagnetic force, and the Grand 0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:35.800 Unified theories proposed that at some point in the past, 0:13:35.880 --> 0:13:39.080 way in the early universe, these were one single unified force, 0:13:39.520 --> 0:13:41.520 and the universe sort of comes to become the thing 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:45.240 it is as these forces separate into distinct forces that 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:48.800 have their own actions and their own mediating particles. Yes, 0:13:48.880 --> 0:13:52.359 so maybe pop was onto something. Now prodopt becomes associated 0:13:52.400 --> 0:13:55.440 with the god Barama in the post Vedic age. But 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:58.400 this is again a situation where with Hinduism, like with 0:13:58.520 --> 0:14:01.280 Chinese mythology, there's no single regular creation story. They are 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:04.480 many and uh. And again there's no there's no singular 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:10.400 creation in Hinduism, or rather periodic cycles of creation and destruction. Uh. 0:14:10.480 --> 0:14:15.360 And also uh innumerable universes. So in in our universe, 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:18.280 for instance, there's this idea in Hinduism that it begins 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:21.600 with a vast ocean, and a serpent sleeps on its surface, 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:24.800 and Vishnu sleeps in the coils of the serpent, and 0:14:24.840 --> 0:14:27.640 a lotus sprouts out from his navel, and within it 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:30.880 is Brahma, and he's urged to meditate on the nature 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:33.760 of his coming creation and finally splits the lotus into 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:38.120 three forms, making the heavens, the sky, and Earth. Everything 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:40.920 else stems from this. Yet again we get a division 0:14:41.000 --> 0:14:44.600 of the universe into its parts. And uh. It's just 0:14:44.720 --> 0:14:47.240 a few more quick examples here. So in ancient Egypt 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:50.880 you had none or new the prime evil waters, the 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:54.880 ocean of chaos, boundless, dark and stormy nice. And in 0:14:54.920 --> 0:15:00.280 Greek mythology we have we have chaos personified, chaos the being. 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:07.520 So this is from the theogeny of Hesiod from around us. Verily, 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:10.680 at the first chaos came to be, but next wide 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:15.000 bosomed Earth, the ever sure foundations of all the deathless 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:18.160 ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus and dim 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:21.680 Tartaris in the depth of the wide path Earth, and 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:26.720 Eros Love fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the 0:15:26.840 --> 0:15:30.080 limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:34.000 gods and all men within them. From chaos came forth 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:37.840 Erebus and Black Night. But of Night were born Ether 0:15:38.040 --> 0:15:41.400 and Day, whom she conceived and bear from union in 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:44.960 love with Arabus. Okay, so this one, to me sounds 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:48.560 more like some of these like Babylonian creation mats and stuff, 0:15:48.600 --> 0:15:52.040 where the forces of the universe are personified as creatures, 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:57.320 monsters or people. Yeah, very much, though the direct personification, Uh, 0:15:57.680 --> 0:15:59.880 I mean you can say that the personification is maybe 0:15:59.880 --> 0:16:02.360 the aired on top of just the idea of these 0:16:02.400 --> 0:16:06.360 forces interacting. And I wonder when people spoke these myths 0:16:06.360 --> 0:16:08.480 in the ancient world to you know, to the extent 0:16:08.560 --> 0:16:12.320 that they were believing them to be correct explanations of 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:14.960 the origins of the universe. Did they think of them 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:18.960 metaphorically or did they think of them as literal, like 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:22.120 did they literally think there was a person chaos or 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:24.960 did the ancient Greeks understand that this was just a 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:29.400 way of helping to visualize some more abstract process one. 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:31.120 Of course, you also have to think about the fact 0:16:31.160 --> 0:16:34.560 that that so many of these different mythologies and folk 0:16:34.640 --> 0:16:37.920 tales and and no matter what level, to what level 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:42.560 they're personified or just related as its forces interacting. Uh, 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:44.560 you know, they're gonna They're probably gonna very depend on 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:46.880 who's who's telling them, who they're telling them to. Like, 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:49.920 I can imagine a situation where someone might look back 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:53.360 on a like like a an animated feature about how 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:56.560 germs work that we created for children in the nineteen seventies, 0:16:57.000 --> 0:16:58.640 and if they if that's all you had to go on, 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:01.880 you might say, oh, well they that germs had little 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:05.520 cartoon faces and and became angry. Yeah, that's sort of 0:17:05.520 --> 0:17:09.440 what I'm asking. Yeah, I don't know, but I could 0:17:09.440 --> 0:17:11.440 see it going either way. You know, you could certainly 0:17:11.440 --> 0:17:14.199 imagine this being the version you told everyone, but it 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:16.560 was in but everyone might have been in agreeance that yeah, 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:18.679 these were not real people. These were This is just 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:23.439 a fun way of remembering these these interactions in a 0:17:23.480 --> 0:17:26.640 fun way of passing them on. Are you an ancient historian, 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:29.720 do you have insights into how people process these myths 0:17:29.760 --> 0:17:32.000 and to what extent they were believed to be literal. 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:34.360 If so, let us know, I want to know more 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:37.800 about that one last myth we should look at. Let's 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:40.600 look at the Book of Genesis the Bible. Uh. I 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:44.400 love the Genesis creation story. It's very beautifully written. Uh. 0:17:44.480 --> 0:17:47.200 In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:51.119 and the earth was without form and void, and darkness 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:54.760 was upon the face of the deep. Oh so good. 0:17:54.800 --> 0:17:57.679 And the spirit of God moved upon the face of 0:17:57.720 --> 0:18:01.239 the waters. And God said, let there be light. And 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:03.919 there was light. And God saw the light that it 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:07.760 was good. And God divided the light from the darkness 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:10.600 and called the light day, and the darkness he called 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:13.480 night and the evening in the morning where the first 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:17.320 day it's great, I mean I I the poetry of 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:20.520 it is is lovely. Now, it's definitely an account in 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:25.680 which God or a creator entity shows up from somewhere 0:18:25.960 --> 0:18:27.639 and it's like, what we got here, a bunch of darkness. 0:18:27.720 --> 0:18:29.800 Let's start, let's do something with this. So there's not 0:18:30.200 --> 0:18:34.480 there's nothing about God emerging from that darkness. It's just you. 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:36.200 You wake up. It's like it's like starting a movie. 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:38.240 You're in the room, here's God in the darkness. Yeah, 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:41.800 here's your protagonist. Yeah. It's funny that. I mean, all 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:45.600 all of these myths really start you with something, because 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:48.159 what else could they do. I mean, you've got to 0:18:48.200 --> 0:18:52.320 have some kind of instigating event or matter in the 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:56.120 story or there cannot be a story. And that question 0:18:56.200 --> 0:18:59.840 also translates into real questions about the cosmology of the universe. 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:02.720 You know that there are always these questions of the 0:19:02.760 --> 0:19:06.000 infinite regressive causes. You know, does the universe in some 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:10.520 sense require a primary explanation like even if you managed 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:13.760 to do away with all kinds of other explanations, like 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:18.440 where do the principles that govern your your physics come from? Uh? 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:20.040 And we can look at more more of that as 0:19:20.080 --> 0:19:22.680 we go on. One interesting fact I wanted to note 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:26.600 about creation mythologies. There are actually religions without creation mythologies. 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:30.040 One example would be Jainism or jainis Um. You know 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:33.560 this found I believe there's a lot of Jainism practiced 0:19:33.600 --> 0:19:39.000 in India, and they reject the idea of a creator 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:42.199 deity or a creation event. Their religious cosmology is just 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:46.840 of an eternally existing universe anyway. I find that really interesting. 0:19:46.880 --> 0:19:49.280 But I also find it interesting how rare that is. 0:19:50.640 --> 0:19:53.960 But this throws up a dichotomy. The origin of the cosmos, 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:57.639 I think is a is a necessarily fascinating thing to contemplate, 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:00.639 because you know that no matter which theory is true, 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:05.440 one half of this dichotomy is correct. Either the universe 0:20:05.560 --> 0:20:09.520 began to exist or it did not begin to exist. 0:20:10.160 --> 0:20:13.240 If it did not begin to exist, this implies there's 0:20:13.240 --> 0:20:17.879 an infinite past. Something that feels just impossible to imagine, right, 0:20:17.960 --> 0:20:22.520 that the past goes on forever into backward time. How 0:20:22.520 --> 0:20:26.119 can you picture that? It seems somehow so counterintuitive. It's 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:31.040 almost self contradictory. Well, that is at least for for 0:20:31.320 --> 0:20:34.600 modern individuals who have a critical view of time. You know, 0:20:34.680 --> 0:20:36.719 we think of our we think of our life as 0:20:36.760 --> 0:20:39.920 the story from cradle to the grave. We think of 0:20:40.080 --> 0:20:42.320 everything is this kind of story or movie in which 0:20:42.320 --> 0:20:46.120 we are the prime character. But I could I could 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:48.840 certainly see that, you know, on a person from an 0:20:48.840 --> 0:20:51.840 older culture in which time is seen a cyclical and 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:55.600 there's there's you know, everything comes back around and individual 0:20:56.160 --> 0:20:59.120 individuals are only important in so far as they they 0:20:59.200 --> 0:21:02.159 you know, they shot some uh, some figure from the 0:21:02.200 --> 0:21:04.880 past or some movement from the past. I could see 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:08.000 that view of time lining up more easily with an 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:11.240 idea of the infinite past and future. Well, a cyclical 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:14.720 eternity is an interesting thing to contemplate, because that seems too, 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:17.199 that's a little bit different than just like in an 0:21:17.200 --> 0:21:20.800 eternally past regressive infinity, you know what I mean, something 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:24.080 that cycles back and forth between the beginning and the 0:21:24.200 --> 0:21:27.840 end forever, versus something that just goes back forever. Because 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:30.440 certainly you still have even that scenario, you still have causation, 0:21:31.040 --> 0:21:34.240 You still have you still have events causing things to happen, 0:21:34.320 --> 0:21:37.200 and I dare say, you're still gonna have five year 0:21:37.200 --> 0:21:41.439 olds who are asking questions about why things are the 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:44.040 way they are, and you have to answer them one 0:21:44.040 --> 0:21:46.359 way or another. Now, one thing that comes to mind, 0:21:46.520 --> 0:21:49.639 is it in in the absence of a like a 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:53.280 certain cultural story that you're supposed to roll out when 0:21:53.280 --> 0:21:55.199 someone says, hey, where when the kid asked, where did 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:57.120 the universe come from? And you say, oh, well God 0:21:57.160 --> 0:22:00.280 created it, or uh, you know there, hey, there was 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:02.880 used to be this moist darkness, and it rolls out 0:22:02.920 --> 0:22:05.600 from there I'm going with the moist darkness from now on. 0:22:05.720 --> 0:22:08.840 By the way, I like that one. But but it 0:22:08.840 --> 0:22:12.479 seems like it would be ideal to not only have 0:22:12.720 --> 0:22:14.879 some story to tell them, but a story that if 0:22:14.880 --> 0:22:17.480 it doesn't have actual truth in it about the actual 0:22:17.480 --> 0:22:19.480 origins of the universe, then at least it has some 0:22:19.720 --> 0:22:24.000 level of relatability to it. There's some there's some level 0:22:24.000 --> 0:22:26.640 of truth to it, you know, you mean, just some 0:22:26.720 --> 0:22:29.720 level of truth. As an applicability to your life. You 0:22:29.720 --> 0:22:31.679 can get something out of it, even if it's not 0:22:31.840 --> 0:22:34.320 a correct description of the cause. Like it, maybe it 0:22:34.359 --> 0:22:38.240 explains something about the you know, the interaction of forces 0:22:38.320 --> 0:22:42.760 within either within your world or within your worldview. Yeah. Sure, uh, 0:22:42.800 --> 0:22:45.119 but I wanted real quick, I wanted to hit the 0:22:45.119 --> 0:22:47.840 other half of that dichogomy, right, So imagine the past 0:22:47.960 --> 0:22:52.000 is not eternal, and that reality did begin to exist 0:22:52.080 --> 0:22:54.919 at some point. There's a limit on the past history 0:22:54.920 --> 0:22:59.520