Our topic this week is the Big Bang – Before and After. It’s another episode in our series "A Philosophical Guide to the Cosmos."

现在他们说大爆炸孕育了整个宇宙。所以你可能会认为大爆炸一定是一次巨大的爆炸。但从技术上讲，大爆炸其实根本不是一次爆炸。不可能是这样。爆炸包括从中心向外的快速膨胀。就像炸弹或手榴弹爆炸时，物质和能量被向四面八方抛出。But despite popular misconceptions, nothing like that happened in theBig Bang. Nothing like that could possibly have happened. Not literally. Notions like “outward” or “center” only apply to things that happen in a place. TheBig Bangdidn’t happen in a place. Where did the big bang happen then? Nowhere! There was no place where theBig Banghappened. Of course, everythingsubsequentto the Big Bang happened somewhere. But not the Big Bang itself because the Big Bang is what created space in the first place.

Now commonsense has it that space isn’t created at all. Space is just sort of eternallythere. And it’s not just commonsense that sees space that way. So did Newton. He saw space as sort of like this infinite pre-existing absolute container that encompasses all matter. Though modern physics doesn’t think of space that way anymore, it’s hard to get past that way of thinking. For example, if we put modern physics aside for a second and ask where space could possibly come to an end, the imagination boggles at the very idea. I mean what would be on the other side of the end of space? Even modern cosmology might seem to tacitly buy into that notion of infinite container space. After all, it says that universe is expanding. But what is the universe expanding into, one might ask, if not into some some pre-existing empty space?

The problem is that cosmology doesn’t really buy that particular conception of “expanding.” Indeed, I’ve heard cosmologist say that a better metaphor for what the universe is doing isn’t exactly expanding but “stretching.” It’s stretching because space is, in a sense,stillbeing created—14 billion years after theBig Bang. And it’s being created everywhere—between galaxies, within solar systems, even within atoms. That’s why everything in the universe is sort of being “pushed” further and further away from everything else in the universe. And, thanks to dark energy, at an ever increasing rate, it turns out. The only reason that so-called bounded things like atoms and our bodies aren’t stretching out with the rest of the universe is that the various attractive forces acting on us swamp the “repulsive” ones.

让我们换个话题，思考一下时间问题。Cosmologists say that there was no time before theBig Bang.You might think that means that just as there was no space where theBig Bang happened, there was also no time when it happened. But it doesn’t mean that at all. The big bang happened about 13.7 billion years ago. At the same time, they say that the big bang “created” time. So how can there be a time at which the Big Bang happened? The answer is that the Big Bang can be regarded as sort of the absolute zero of time. It’s the point to which all the many relativistic timelines in the universe converge, the point before which they agree that there are no other times.

That’s clear enough, I think, but it does raise another question. If there was no timebeforethe big bang, how could there have been acauseof theBig Bang? Ordinarily, we think that causesprecede它们在时间上的影响。Nothingpreceded theBig Bang.Ergo…. But if there was no cause of the Big Bang (in time) where exactly did it come from? Wherecould它是从哪里来的?这不仅仅是科学家不知道这个问题的答案。It seems as though perhaps they can’tpossiblyknow the answer. When we reach for explanations beyondBig Bang, we’re reaching beyond the limits of science.

Now one might be tempted to respond that, well, maybe our old familiar concepts of space, time, matter, and even cause and effect break down at theBig Bang但科学真正擅长做的一件事是想出奇怪的新概念来帮助我们更好地理解起初看起来不可理解的事情。这种可能的回应的问题在于，像空间、时间、原因、结果、物质等概念并不是任何古老的概念。它们是我们在科学研究中首先使用的概念。它们就是康德所说的先验概念，是所有进一步概念的基础。

Maybe, we just have to face the fact that there is a limit to the power to solve all the ultimate mysteries of the universe. I don’t by any mean mean to suggest though that we should necessarily fall back on religion, where science falters. Although some do think that. Still, I’m not necessarily willing to place all my bets on science just yet. But at the same time, I’m not willing to bet against science either. Put me down in the “let’s wait and see where this goes, column.”