In 1970, Stephen Hawking put forward the idea that the energy content of a black hole might occasionally produce a pair of subatomic particles, one of which might escape. This implies that a black hole can evaporate, although this would take an unimaginably long period of time. In the end, according to this view, it would explode, producing a large amount of gamma rays. Hawking’s theories have attracted a lot of attention. His well-written best seller A Brief History of Time, From the Big Bang to Black Holes, was perhaps the book that more than any other drew the attention of the new theories of cosmology to the public’s attention. The author’s lucid style made complicated ideas seem both simple and attractive. It makes for good reading, but so do many works of science fiction. Regrettably, it appears to have become fashionable for the authors of popular works about cosmology to sound as mystical as possible, and to put forward the most outlandish theories, based on the maximum amount of speculation and the minimum amount of facts. Mathematical models have displaced observation almost entirely. The central philosophy of this school of thought is summed up in Stephen Hawking’s aphorism “one cannot really argue with a mathematical theorem.”

Hawking claims that he and Roger Penrose proved (mathematically) that the general theory of relativity “implied that the universe must have a beginning and, possibly, an end.” The basis of all this is that the general theory of relativity is taken as absolutely true. Yet, paradoxically, at the point of the big bang general relativity suddenly becomes irrelevant. It ceases to apply, just as all the laws of physics cease to apply, so that nothing whatsoever can be said about it. Nothing, that is, except metaphysical speculation of the worst sort. But we will return to this later.

According to this theory, time and space did not exist before the big bang, when all the matter in the universe was alleged to have been concentrated at a single infinitesimally small point, known to mathematicians as a singularity. Hawking himself points out the dimensions involved in this remarkable cosmological transaction:

We now know that our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million that can be seen using modern telescopes, each galaxy itself containing some hundred thousand million stars…We live in a galaxy that is about one hundred thousand light-years across and is slowly rotating; the stars in its spiral arms orbit around its centre about once every several hundred million years. Our sun is just an ordinary, average-sized, yellow star, near the inner edge of one of the spiral arms. We have certainly come a long way since Aristotle and Ptolemy, when we thought that the earth was the centre of the universe![66]

In point of fact, the very large quantities of matter mentioned here give no real idea of the amount of matter in the universe. New galaxies and super-clusters are being discovered all the time, and there is no end to this process. We may have come a long way since Aristotle in some respects. But in others, it seems that we are far, far behind him. Aristotle would never have made the mistake of talking about a time before time existed, or claiming that the entire universe was, in effect, created from nothing. In order to find ideas like these one would have to go back several thousand years to the world of the Judaic-Babylonian creation myth.

Whenever someone attempts to protest against these proceedings, he is instantly ushered into the presence of the great Albert Einstein, as a naughty schoolboy is dragged to the headmaster’s study, and given a stern lecture on the need to show greater respect to general relativity, informed that one cannot argue with mathematical theorems, and sent home duly chastened. The main difference is that most headmasters are alive, and Einstein is dead, and therefore unable to comment on this particular interpretation of his theories. In fact, one would look in vain in all the writings of Einstein for any reference to the big bang, black holes and the like. Einstein himself, although he initially tended towards philosophical idealism, was implacably opposed to mysticism in science. He spent the last decades of his life fighting against the subjective idealist views of Heisenberg and Bohr, and, in fact, moved close to a materialist position. He would certainly have been horrified that mystical conclusions should be drawn from his theories. The following is a good example:

All of the Friedmann solutions have the feature that at some time in the past (between ten and twenty thousand million years ago) the distance between neighbouring galaxies must have been zero. At that time, which we call the big bang, the density of the universe and the curvature of space-time would have been infinite. Because mathematics cannot really handle infinite numbers, this means that the general theory of relativity (on which Friedmann’s solutions are based) predicts that there is a point in the universe where the theory itself breaks down. Such a point is an example of what mathematicians call a singularity. In fact, all our theories of science are formulated on the assumption that space-time is smooth and nearly flat, so they break down at the big bang singularity, where the curvature of space-time is infinite. This means that even if there were events before the big bang, one could not use them to determine what would happen afterward, because predictability would break down at the big bang. Correspondingly, if, as is the case, we know only what has happened since the big bang, we could not determine what happened beforehand. As far as we are concerned, events before the big bang can have no consequences, so they should therefore cut them out of the model and say that time had a beginning at the big bang.

Passages such as this forcefully remind one of the intellectual gymnastics of the Medieval Schoolmen, arguing about the number of angels who could dance on the end of a pin. This is not meant as an insult. If the validity of an argument is determined by its internal consistency, then the arguments of the Schoolmen were as valid as this. They were not fools, but highly skilled logicians and mathematicians, who erected theoretical constructs as elaborate and perfect in their way as medieval cathedrals. All that was necessary was to accept their premises, and everything fell into place. The problem is whether the original premise is valid or not. This is a general problem with all mathematics, and its central weakness. And this entire theory leans very heavily on mathematics.

“At the time which we call the big bang…” But if there was no time, how can we refer to it as “a time” at all? Time is said to have begun at that point. So what was there before time? A time when there was no time! The self-contradictory nature of this idea is glaringly obvious. Time and space are the mode of existence of matter. If there was neither time, nor space, nor matter, what was there? Energy? But energy, as Einstein explains, is just another manifestation of matter. A force field? But a force field is also energy, so the difficulty remains. The only way that time can be got rid of is if before the big bang there was – nothing.

The problem is: how is it possible to get from nothing to something? If one is religiously minded, there is no problem; God created the universe from nothing. This is the doctrine of the Catholic Church, of Creation ex nihilo. Hawking is uncomfortably aware of this fact, as he says in the very next line:

“Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention. (The Catholic Church, on the other hand, seized on the big bang model and in 1951 officially pronounced it to be in accordance with the Bible.)”

Hawking himself does not want to accept this conclusion. But it is unavoidable. The whole mess arises out of a philosophically incorrect concept of time. Einstein was partly responsible for this, since he appeared to introduce a subjective element by confusing the measurement of time with time itself. Here again the reaction against the old mechanical physics of Newton has been carried to an extreme. The question is not whether time is “relative” or “absolute”. The central issue to be addressed is whether time is objective or subjective; whether time is the mode of existence of matter or an entirely subjective concept existing in the mind and determined by the observer. Hawking clearly adopts a subjective view of time, when he writes:

Newton’s laws of motion put an end to the idea of absolute position in space. The theory of relativity gets rid of absolute time. Consider a pair of twins. Suppose that one twin goes to live on the top of a mountain while the other stays at sea level. The first twin would age faster than the second. Thus, if they met again, one would be older than the other. In this case, the difference in ages would be very small, but it would be much larger if one of the twins went for a long trip in a spaceship at nearly the speed of light. When he returned he would be much younger than the one who stayed on Earth. This is known as the twins paradox, but it is a paradox only if one has the idea of absolute time at the back of one’s mind. In the theory of relativity there is no unique absolute measure of time that depends on where he is and how he is moving.[67]

That there is a subjective element in the measurement of time is not in dispute. We measure time according to a definite frame of reference, which can, and does, vary from one place to another. The time in London is different from the time in Sydney or New York. But this does not mean that time is purely subjective. The objective processes in the universe take place whether we are able to measure them or not. Time, space, and motion are objective to matter, and have no beginning and no end.

Here it is interesting to note what Engels had to say on the subject:

Let us continue. So time had a beginning. What was there before this beginning? The universe, which was then in a self-identical, unchanging state. And as no changes succeed one another in this state, the more specialised idea of time transforms itself into the more general idea of being. In the first place, we are not in the least concerned here with what concepts change in Herr Dühring’s head. The subject at issue is not the concept of time, but real time, which Herr Dühring will by no means rid himself of so cheaply. In the second place, however much the concept of time may be converted into the more general idea of being, this takes us not one step further. For the basic forms of all being are space and time, and being out of time is just as gross an absurdity as being out of space.

The Hegelian ‘timelessly past being’ and the neo-Schellingian ‘unpreconceivable being’ are rational ideas compared with this being out of time. For this reason Herr Dühring sets to work very cautiously; actually it is of course time, but of such a kind as cannot really be called time; time does not in itself consist of real parts, and is only divided up arbitrarily by our understanding – only an actual filling of time with differentiable facts is susceptible of being counted – what the accumulation of empty duration means is quite unimaginable. What this accumulation is supposed to mean is immaterial here; the question is whether the world, in the state assumed here, has duration, passes through a duration in time. We have long known that we can get nothing by measuring such a duration without content, just as we can get nothing by measuring without aim or purpose in empty space; and Hegel calls this infinity bad precisely because of the tedium of this procedure.[68]

  1. Hawking, S. A Brief History of Time, From the Big Bang to Black Holes, p. 34.

  2. Hawking, S. op. cit., pp. 46-7 and 33.

  3. Engels, F. Anti-Dühring, pp. 64-5.