The Problem of Beginnings: VIII. The Beginning That Has No Before

We have been trying to imagine the beginning of the universe as an event.

Something happens.

And then the universe exists.

But an event normally has a place in a sequence.

There is a before.

There is an after.

Something changes.

That is what makes it an event.

So if the universe began, we are tempted to imagine the beginning as the first event in a sequence.

But then we immediately ask:

What came before it?

Perhaps the difficulty is now clear.

We are treating the beginning as though it were an ordinary event.

But perhaps it is not.

A beginning within the universe can have a before.

A beginning of the temporal order cannot have a temporal before in the same sense.

This does not mean that nothing happened.

It means that the word happened may itself depend upon the order whose emergence we are trying to describe.

The same applies to space.

We can ask where an event happened because events occur somewhere.

But if space itself is part of what begins, asking where the universe began may be asking for a location outside the very field of locations.

And causation presents the same difficulty.

We can ask what caused an event because causes and effects stand in relations within an already structured world.

But the emergence of that structure cannot automatically be treated as another event within it.

Perhaps we have been making the same mistake in three different forms.

We have imagined:

a time before time,

a place outside space,

a cause before causation.

Each seems to require a larger framework in which the thing being explained can occur.

But if the beginning concerns the emergence of the framework itself, the framework cannot simply be placed around it.

This suggests a different meaning of beginning.

Perhaps a beginning is not always the first event.

Sometimes it is the point at which a new order becomes possible.

A musical composition begins when its first note sounds.

But the possibility of melody depends upon relations among sounds.

A language begins for a child not with the first word in the abstract, but with the emergence of a system of distinctions through which words can become meaningful.

A path begins when movement acquires a direction.

In each case, the beginning is not merely an item.

It is the emergence of a new field of possibilities.

Perhaps something similar is required when we think about the universe.

We need not imagine a thing appearing at a location outside space.

Nor an event occurring before time.

Nor a cause operating before causation.

We might instead ask:

When did there first exist a world in which events, places, causes and possibilities could become distinguishable?

That question is still difficult.

But it no longer demands an impossible vantage point outside the world.

And perhaps this is the clue we have been looking for.

The beginning of something need not itself belong to the order that it makes possible.

The beginning of time need not have a time before it.

The beginning of space need not have a place beyond it.

The beginning of a causal order need not have a prior cause in that order.

A beginning can be real without being preceded.

Perhaps that is what we have been trying to imagine all along.

Not the first thing.

But the first becoming.

And if so, there is one final question.

If the beginning is the emergence of new possibilities, what does that tell us about the world that comes afterwards?

Perhaps we have been looking for the beginning as though it were the answer.

Perhaps the beginning is only where the question changes.