“As above, so below” is a literally age-old proverb, the simplest interpretation of which may be that by studying phenomena at any particular scale, we may gain valuable insights about other phenomena at a smaller or larger scale. This is indeed confirmed by experience.
The reader will doubtless be familiar with the development of the Scientific Method, first formalized in the Renaissance by gentlemen of leisure with an insatiable curiosity regarding the natural world: a cycle of observation, hypothesis, rigorous and documented testing, and a new set of observations leading to an increased understanding of the phenomenon – as well as a new hypothesis building on the newly gained knowledge.
Before the Scientific Method, knowledge of the world beyond direct human experience was established by philosophers using reason alone. Their knowledge was full of gaps, but they were right about many things which would not be possible to test for many centuries. Certainly the most famous example is the theory of the atom, conceived by Democritus around the 5th century BCE; it would not be confirmed by experimentation and observation for twenty-four centuries, until John Dalton proved the existence of basic elemental particles that could combine in a variety of compound substances.
There are many more examples of conclusions about the world at the micro- and macro-scale that were drawn correctly by ancient thinkers upon no grounds but their own reasoning based on observations of the world at the human scale. To mention only a very few:
The ancient idea of the ether – an all-pervading medium undetectable to the physical senses but capable of transmitting “subtler” impressions – anticipated Faraday’s and Maxwell’s discovery of the electromagnetic field in the 19th century CE.
Anaximander argued for the evolution of species in the 6th century BCE, but unlike Darwin did not propose a cause.
Anaximander also theorized that the Earth does not rest upon any object, but is surrounded by space.
Around 500 BCE, Pythagoras claimed that the Earth has a spherical form; some two centuries later, Aristotle would provide logical analysis of observed facts to support this theory.
Human science has not always held the assumption of a temporally finite universe. Einstein himself believed originally in a cosmos unchanging at the macro-scale, like most learned and unlearned folk of his time. It was the observations of Edwin Hubble – who proved the universe to be expanding – that purportedly changed Einstein’s mind, and eventually the public understanding of the cosmos.
It took only seven years for Georges Lemaître – incidentally a Catholic priest as well as a scientist – to extend the newly confirmed expansion of the universe backwards in time to its logical extreme: a single point in space and time, encompassing the beginning of all things. The theory known today as the “Big Bang” was originally conceived as an attempt to bend Science to conform to Orthodoxy. The irony that religious extremists today consider the same theory to be blasphemous and anti-religious will hardly escape the reader.
In any case, most people today who have benefited from basic public education believe the universe to have had a beginning at a precise moment in time. Likewise, the general consensus is that the cosmos will continue to expand until, trillions of years from now, matter and energy will dissipate to the point of “heat death” or a state of eternal darkness and cold.
The flaw in this theory is that it does not – and can not – explain the state of the universe prior to the Big Bang. The very religious will interpret this as evidence of the Divine – but in scientific terms, Divinity is no more than Deus ex Machina: a standard placeholder for any gaps in our knowledge. The question remains. How does Everything appear spontaneously from Nothing?
Human mathematics breaks down at infinity and at singularity – if there could be something before the Big Bang, not only do we not know what it could be, but we have no way of even modeling what it could be. Occam’s Razor favors the simpler explanation: in this case, that there wasn’t a Big Bang at all, but rather that expansion does not extend into a singularity. If we accept that proposition, at least as a viable theory, then we must also accept the flip side of the coin: universal expansion may not extend unto heat death either.
As of yet, there is no definitive answer. There are many hypotheses, some of which point out that the currently observable pattern of expansion need not be constant over all of time or space. Our technology is still so rudimentary that our rate of learning is increasing exponentially. What we know is a speck of dust in the universe. We may be right about the origin and the eventual fate of the world; but we may also be wrong. Our best guess is still only a guess.
The reality of death as the inevitable end of life is at first frightening. It may be small comfort to think of the far-removed eventual death of the Universe itself; but at least there is a kind of symmetry that helps us to place ourselves and our experiences in a broader perspective.
Let us now return to our original proposition: “as above, so below.” We humans – even when we are enlightened enough to accept our own mortality and see it as a small-scale reflection of the finite existence of the Universe – are making a serious assumption. Do we understand our mortality from observing the temporal limits of our world, or are we projecting our limited knowledge of our own nature onto the Universe in its totality?
If Above is as Below – and if the Universe turns out to be eternal after all – perhaps we will learn that our own mortality, too, is no more than a partial understanding of a greater reality. Then again, our existence may be but a spark in the infinite void.
What does your heart tell you?