The Problem of Beginnings: VII. When Possibility Begins

We have been looking for the beginning.

First in time.

Then before time.

Then in nothing.

Then in a cause.

Then in a background.

Finally, in a first difference.

Each time, the beginning moved.

Perhaps we have been looking in the wrong direction.

We have assumed that, before something happens, its possibility is already there.

A seed can become a tree because becoming a tree is already possible.

A building can be constructed because its construction is possible.

A person can learn a language because the possibility of learning it already exists.

Possibility seems to come first.

But does it?

Consider the first door.

Before there was a door, was there a possibility of entering that room?

Perhaps.

But entering became possible in a particular way only when there was a doorway.

The possibility was not simply waiting somewhere.

It emerged with the relation between the spaces.

We encounter this everywhere.

A path becomes possible when there is somewhere to go.

A conversation becomes possible when there are speakers who can respond.

A tool becomes possible when there is something it can be used to do.

A new form of life becomes possible when new relations among conditions arise.

Possibilities seem to multiply as the world acquires new distinctions and relations.

Perhaps possibility is not a warehouse.

Perhaps it is a becoming.

This changes the problem of beginnings.

If possibility itself can emerge, then asking:

What was possible before the universe?

may be no easier than asking what was happening before time.

Possible for whom?

Possible where?

Possible within what relations?

A possibility is not simply a thing waiting to become actual.

It is a way in which things could become otherwise.

And ways of becoming otherwise depend upon what already exists.

The possibility of a door depends upon walls, openings, movement, rooms.

The possibility of speech depends upon bodies, sounds, listeners, and histories.

The possibility of life depends upon conditions that make life possible.

Possibility seems therefore to have a history.

Not necessarily a history of things that were once possible and then became impossible.

A history of new possibilities becoming available.

This gives us a different way of thinking about beginnings.

Perhaps the universe did not begin when the first thing appeared.

Perhaps what began was a field in which new possibilities could continually emerge.

A beginning would then not be the transition:

nothing → something.

Nor even:

one state → another.

It would be something more subtle:

a world acquiring the capacity to become otherwise.

If so, the first difference mattered because it made further differences possible.

The first relation mattered because it made further relations possible.

And what we call a universe may be less like a thing that appeared than like a process in which possibilities continually become available.

We began by asking:

What came before the universe?

Now another question has taken its place:

What would it mean for possibility itself to have a beginning?

Perhaps the answer is not that possibility suddenly appeared.

Perhaps possibility began when there was finally something that could be otherwise.