The Problem of Beginnings: II. Before Before

The question returns almost immediately.

What was there before the universe?

We have already noticed the difficulty.

If time began with the universe, then before appears to have nowhere to stand.

But the word is so familiar that it is easy to underestimate what it asks of the world.

For one thing to be before another, there must be some kind of order.

Breakfast comes before lunch.

Monday comes before Tuesday.

Childhood comes before old age.

In each case, before relates two distinguishable moments within a sequence.

But what if there is no sequence yet?

What would it mean to ask what came before the first moment?

We might imagine an earlier moment.

But then the first was not first.

Or we might imagine an endless succession of earlier moments.

But then the question of a first beginning has simply disappeared.

The problem is not that we have failed to look far enough back.

The problem is that looking back is itself what is in question.

Suppose we say that there was nothing before the universe.

The sentence sounds reassuring.

It gives us an answer.

But notice what it imagines.

There was a before.

And during that before, there was nothing.

Nothing lasted until something happened.

But how long did nothing last?

The question sounds absurd.

That is precisely the point.

An empty period is still a period.

A time in which nothing happens is still time.

So we cannot solve the problem by placing nothing at the beginning of the temporal sequence.

We have merely extended the sequence and emptied it.

The same difficulty appears when we imagine a cause.

Perhaps something caused the universe.

But a cause is ordinarily prior to its effect.

If the causal relation requires temporal order, then a cause before time again assumes what it is meant to explain.

This does not prove that the universe had no cause.

It shows something more modest and more troublesome:

our ordinary idea of a cause may not travel beyond the conditions in which causes become distinguishable.

Perhaps this is the mistake we keep making.

We encounter a limit.

Then we treat the limit as if it were another place.

We arrive at the beginning of time and imagine more time stretching behind it.

We reach the edge of space and imagine empty space beyond it.

We encounter the absence of everything and imagine a condition in which that absence patiently exists.

But perhaps a limit is not always another region.

Perhaps the beginning of a relation is not itself another instance of that relation.

The beginning of temporal order need not be an earlier moment.

The emergence of space need not occur somewhere.

The conditions under which causation becomes meaningful need not themselves be caused in the ordinary sense.

This leaves us with an uncomfortable possibility.

Perhaps the question:

What came before the beginning?

is not difficult because the answer is hidden.

Perhaps it is difficult because before is one of the things that has yet to become possible.

And if that is so, we have reached an even stranger question.

Not:

What came before before?

But:

What must happen for there to be a before at all?