Caught in the Event Horizon

Essays The Theory of One Collection Christopher Bek

Summary—Caught in the Event Horizon blazes a trail from the big bang through black holes, metaphysical monads, and freewill and determinism—finally arriving at the inescapable conclusion that the ball is either in or its out.

A black hole is a theoretical, singularistic phenomena characterized by an extremely dense celestial body producing gravitational fields so strong that nothing including light is able to escape.  A singularity is characterized by a breakdown or boundary of spacetime.  Other examples of singularities include the big bang and one divided by zero.  The concept of the black hole was developed in 1916 by Karl Schwarzschild (1873-1916) based on Einstein’s general relativity.  Black holes produce spherical boundaries known as event horizons representing the point of no return for escaping bodies.  Bodies inside the event horizon become lunchmeat while bodies outside the event horizon are free and clear.  Bodies at the event horizon are caught in a kind of interstellar purgatory such that they are neither pulled in nor are they free—like being perpetually chased by the cops—never being captured but never able to lose them either.

Eureka!  The big bang is the currently accepted scientific theory explaining the beginning of the universe some sixteen billion years ago.  The theory was developed in 1948 by George Gamow (1904-68) also based on general relativity.  Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) foreshadowed the big bang theory a hundred years before Gamow in his 1848 poem Eureka!—The universe begins when God creates a primordial particle out of nothing.  From it matter irradiates spherically in all directions in an inexpressibly great yet limited number of unimaginably yet not infinitely minute atoms.  Also in Eureka! Poe wrote—The universe of stars has always been considered as coincident with the universe proper.  It has been always assumed either directly or indirectly—at least since the dawn of intelligible astronomy—that, were it possible for us to attain any given point in space, we should still find on all sides of us an interminable succession of stars.  This was the untenable idea of Pascal when making perhaps the most successful attempt ever made at periphrasing the conception for which we struggle in the word universe.  According to Pascal “The universe is a sphere in which the centre is everywhere and the boundary is nowhere.”  But although this intended definition is in fact no definition of the universe of stars, we may accept it as a definition of the universe proper—that is to say, of the universe of space.  And while we find it impossible to fancy an end to space, we have no difficult in picturing any one of an infinity of beginnings.

Empty, Curved Spacetime.  General or nonlinear relativity in 1915 upgraded Einstein’s special or linear relativity from 1905 and introduced the notion of curved spacetime—thereby laying the foundation for the theorization of black holes and the big bang.  While Galileo (1564-1642) treated gravity and inertia as mathematically equivalent, Einstein found the key to general relativity by identifying the two as actually equivalent—thus also verifying the identity of mathematical equivalence with actual equivalence.  Einstein established the identity of gravity and inertia by proving the surface of a sphere and a circle are mathematically equivalent.  Imagine a sphere sitting atop a flat surface representing the universe proper.  By drawing a line from the north pole through every point on the equator and below, a circle is created on the flat surface.  Then by doubling the area of the circle we can see that the sphere and circle are mathematically equivalent.  Now consider replacing the sphere with Pascal’s sphere and the circle with the inverted Pascal’s sphere so that the boundary is everywhere and the centre is nowhere.  We know the thing which defines our universe is that our dimensionality has no meaning outside our universe—indicating that our universe of stars occupies no more than a point in the universe proper.  And since every point in our universe is both at the centre and the boundary in the universe proper, we can say that Pascal’s sphere and the inverted Pascal’s sphere are mathematically equivalent and thus actually equivalent.

Great Minds.  Blaise Pascal (1623-62) was a French philosopher, mathematician and physicist who, along with his contemporaries Descartes, Newton, Berkeley, Spinoza and Leibniz from the century of genius, is considered one of the greatest minds in Western history.  While Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler set the table for Descartes in ending the dark ages, all of the great minds built on the foundation laid by Descartes.  Newton brought the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century to a head by establishing the principals of science that have since dominated Western thought.  He invented calculus, established the heterogeneity of light and the laws of gravity.  Berkeley foreshadowed relativity by rejecting Newton’s notions of absolute space and time—and also foreshadowed the notion of consciousness inherent in quantum theory by insisting that nothing is real except our minds.  Spinoza was a Dutch rationalist philosopher who rejected freewill and advocated the view that God and the universe are one in the same—and that God is an uncaused substance.  The mature work of Leibniz is represented by his monadology from which calculus—the mathematics of motion—arose coincidentally with Newton’s version.  And while Spinoza argued for one substance in the universe, Descartes said two and Leibniz argued for many different universal substances.  Against Spinoza, Descartes and Leibniz contended for the doctrine of freewill.  Freewill is the view that humans have total freedom of choice while determinism opposes freewill and contends that every event occurs necessarily.

Elemental Conceptual Picture.  Einstein’s early work always began with an elemental conceptual picture.  Chief among his early works were The Photoelectric Effect, which asserts that light exists as both particles and waves—and Special Relativity, which encapsulates Newtonian physics into Maxwellian wave mechanics thereby accounting for the dilation of spacetime.  According to relativity, the length of a body begins to dilate once in motion.  Traveling at 87 percent of lightspeed, the length of the body dilates by half—while the length of a body traveling at lightspeed dilates to zero.  In that photons by definition travel at lightspeed, we can see that photons exist at the boundary of spacetime.  Furthermore, it can only be that there is one photon for the simple reason that there is only enough spacetime for one—which is arguably coincident with God or Eve from the story of Creation and is also the flashpoint of the big bang.  Since the photon is at the boundary of spacetime, we see the big bang is occurring as we speak and the boundary of spacetime is the medium that supports waves of both light and matter.  Creation then begins when the photon splits into matter and antimatter or electrons and positrons (a positron is an electron traveling backwards in time).  By recognizing electrons as coincident with consciousness, we see that conscious is the perceptual apparatus by which we comprehend reality and the essence of reality is fundamentally different than our conscious perception of it.

Connecting the Dots.  Leibniz’s monadology represent a metaphysical system of great beauty and surprising simplicity that characterizes the universe as populated by an inexpressibly great number of unimaginably minute atoms called monads or electrons.  Each monad is a self-contained immaterial spiritual entities which resemble other monads in their ways of perception.  Monads with the least perceptive abilities represents matter and plant life while those with the clearest perceptions take on the forms of consciousness and self-awareness—with the highest monad representing God the photon.  According to Leibniz, monads are not subject to the laws of cause and effect, but move with pre-arranged harmony.  By equating the highest monad with God and recognizing that the big bang as continually occurring, we see that the photon represents the repository of universal knowledge.  As we sit in a movie theatre watching a movie, the essence of the movie is the physical film and not that which is projected on the screen.  Sir James Jeans described the universe as four-dimensional relativistic soap bubbles, while John Wheeler described it as quantum foam.  The theory of one recognizes the two as same equivalent film—meaning there is no difference between looking through a telescope and looking through a microscope.  We see that the film represents the wave-supporting boundary of the universe.  The unified field theory recognizes consciousness as the inertial effects experienced by the monads passing through the film.  Descartes’ assertion of two substances is represented by the monads and the film.  Spinoza reasonably assumed there was only one substances in that all monads are integrally connected—and Leibniz reasonably assumed a multitude of substances in that all monads are different.

Conclusion.  Under behaviorism, the bogus doctrine that denies consciousness, individual actions are deterministic for the reason that they must follow the baseless authority of the superego.  Under existentialism, the authentic doctrine that individuals have total freedom and total responsibility, actions are paradoxically both free and determined.  An individual whose mind was so great as to be as great as God would be able to make perfect decisions and would thus have no choice of action and would therefore be deterministic and without freewill.  To the degree that our minds are less than God is the same degree as which we have freewill in making the best possible choices.  To the degree that we subscribe to authority other than God is the same degree as which we are caught in the event horizon.