A mysterious and mighty hand cast the tiny dice

The academicians began dancing upon the head of the proverbial pin

And everyone in the audience applauded and cheered the grand performance

Science has made many things possible that before were only things of the imagination. And yet science alone is insufficient if it is only about reductionist analysis and technological application in the real world. Science must also offer to us a coherent view of the world, one that is naturalistic and serves to explain as succinctly as possible all the phenomena and processes that occur in the world. Part of the invention of science has been its systematic extension of our ability to see worlds we didn't even imagine previously to exist. In so doing, it has enlarged our compass, scope and view of reality by many orders of magnitude. It has sharpened our focus upon reality. At the same time, reality as we understand this especially as a scientific question, has become obviously more complicated at each turn of the resolving powers of our scientific instruments.

Cosmology is, properly speaking, a naturalistic view of the world. The world it looks out onto through the window of science is of course the world of the total universe or some part of the hypothetical whole of reality. As a worldview, cosmology is a natural explanation that is important to our symbolic identity as intelligent human beings. We seek answers to fundamental questions we ask about reality. These we ask as we gaze up into the nighttime heavens to view the stars that surround us on all sides and seem always to follow upon our shoulders whichever way we may turn and go. We have sought these kinds of answers for a very long time, and these kinds of questions help define our identity as Homo sapiens sapiens--as beings of infinite wisdom and folly.

Cosmology is not only the esoteric domain of a highly specialized and exclusive group of experts. It is the realm of every person to consider, ponder and wonder about. We need to know our place in the world, in a naturalistic sense, and this must be done in a language not overloaded with professional jargon and technicalese. Cosmology is one of the most common forms of knowledge that human beings can share with one another, and it helps to define some of the most basic principles and concepts in our natural sciences.

I have undertaken this work in cosmology as an extended outcome of theoretical work upon some very basic ideas in natural systems. This work is a logical consequence of an earlier theory proposed of physical systems, and as such offers a revised and more coherent explanation of the universe in the form of both a cosmology and as a systematic set of statements as to the basic structural patterning of reality. By reality in this context, I am referring to the objective physical reality that is "out there" beyond the boundaries of our own subjective spheres of personal experience. Within this work, I am not interested in alternative realities or alternative views of reality except what we can correctly call science in an objective and inter-subjective sense.

As a theory the cosmological view of physical reality that I present herein is highly productive though it is counter-paradigmatic in the Kuhnian sense as to what is the received view of the universe, the classical relativistic hot Big Bang model. I take issue with this model as a zero-state universe that is in an ultimate sense blindly deterministic. Based upon a principle of cosmic singularity, it fails to resolve basic internal contradictions and external observational inconsistencies implied by this principle.

The paradox of this model is that it still strongly suggests that the universe is probably expanding. But it is likely that the red shift and Hubble constant are not the primary indications of this expansion process, at least not in any direct sense that we construe this now in terms of apparent galactic recession. We have an unquestioned linear model of light propagation that was bequeathed to us by Einsteinian relativity that still does not allow God to play dice with the universe. I have adopted a non-linear theory of light, as a self-propagating field system that predicts that light in the long run will systematically downshift in frequency while its amplitude gradually grows. This is the expected outcome of light as a naturally occurring system. What remains remarkable about it is its degree of asymptotic stability--its near Pythagorean perfection in the universe that is the product of its almost perfect transparency in space-time. I say, almost perfect of course, as light is inherently a thermodynamic system in the most basic of senses, and hence, it is also an entropic system.

This turns out to be a critical issue in understanding both the cosmological structure of the universe and in understanding the basic processes of our reality, if the theory proves to be even partially true. It opens the door rather dramatically to our being able finally to understand and control gravitation and step beyond the boundaries of our own relativistic constraints in a unified cosmological field, among other interesting things.

If we are to understand the expansion of the universe, we must see this expansion as part of some more general relativistic frame of reference that is universal in scope, and reaches beyond Einsteinian relativities and Heisenbergian uncertainties. The model of expansion I have developed applies to what may possibly be a sub-universe, and would be an expected outcome of a universe that lacks a common gravitational center of balance. Instead, we have a picture of a universe in which there are multiple centers of gravitational balance competing with one another, and in turn being driven further and further apart as these regions migrate toward the peripheries of the overall system.

In such a model, a central region develops, but this is one that might be contrary to our everyday expectations, as it would comprise a huge gravitational vortex in which space-time is flooding out in all directions, and not flooding in. This model appears to be even more bizarre if we come to understand this center as not being focally defined, but interstitially definable between sub-universes such that center and outer limits connect together. The universe comes to take on a reticulated and variegated cosmic structure, a cellular framework defined within a complex lattice of space-time. What we think is the center becomes the all-encompassing margins of our universe. The overall view of the universe is not as a concentric, spiral or disc-shaped affair, as to be expected of our observation of conventional gravity systems. Instead it leads to a complex view of a reticulated or mosaic multi-state structure that is perhaps bound together like a rope twisting through shared space-time that is gravitationally unified. Sub-universes appear in this structure to be non-isotropically distributed within their cellular compartments.

Thus, we may conclude that expansion is occurring everywhere in this larger structure, expressed in terms of sub-universes, but may ultimately be leading nowhere else but back to itself in some other set of dimensions. To reconcile this paradox, I have hypothesized a hypothetical structure of physical reality that I refer to as the sphere of reality. This sphere of reality provides the common frame of reference for our hypothetization of universal relativity. The basic argument of this sphere of reality is that of universal continuity and congruity. I make these presuppositions inferentially based upon observations of ordered physical relations in our own observational sphere. These presuppositions appear as theoretically and scientifically necessary to a coherent cosmology. We may call them into question only if we can find a suitable explanation or replacement for them that accounts for the ordering we do see in the universe.

Essentially, the total universe co-occurs in an interconnected manner at the same "instant." It is the complete and grander nature of the interconnections between universal structures that we do not fully understand. We cannot actually conceptualize this instantaneity in relativistic terms of temporal standards we apply in our own field of observation and upon which a general relativistic cosmology is based. It suggests, among other things, complex state structures of the universe. It suggests also that our understanding of this is relative to the fundamental energy system that we are occurring within, and this system is necessarily stratified upon multiple levels. We can hypothesize multiple, interconnected reality spheres though it may be ultimately impossible to prove.

Complex state structures of the inferable universe lead to an evolutionary cosmology of the self-reproducing universe. Our only model for spontaneous reproduction is from biological life, but we must understand that the reproductive processes occurring in the universe are non-biological in form, and there is no direct connection between these kinds of processes. The fact of the spontaneous evolution of life from physical processes lends analogical credence to the possibility of this hypothesis of spontaneous universal physical (i.e., non-biological) evolution. This process of spontaneous generation appears only anti-entropic unless we understand it to be occurring within a larger meta-system framework that may be ultimately open and unbounded in scale and scope.

We can understand the cosmological history of the evolutionary universe as one of the emergence and differentiation of the reality sphere (or spheres) through "time" as this occurs in a larger quintessential dimension. It leads to a complex series of state-stages of development of a universe that is growing increasingly more complex and dynamic at each turn of the reality sphere. The expansionism we infer in the universe is an inherent part of this larger play of dynamics.

One of the most interesting and strangest outcomes of this hypothesis of the reality sphere, is the strong suggestion that we may in fact be interpenetrated by a parallel and symmetrical, or "mirror" universe. Such a universe would coexist at mutual connection points with our own physical universe even though we cannot directly apprehend it. It suggests that, among other things, if we could pass a spaceship unscathed through the core of our own sun, then we might pop-out on the other side. But this would not be the other side of our sun, but possibly the opposite side of our universe. We would be like Alice who passed through the looking glass. Everything might appear otherwise normal. It cannot be said if the suns, planets and asteroids occurring on the other side are in the exact disposition as on this side, if there even would be such entities.

It is likely that the actual cosmography of this mirror universe would be substantially different from our own. We cannot expect that our sun would even occur in the same relations within the same antithetical Milky Way galaxy as our own. Both universes would have had their own cosmographic histories. They would be interconnected in a strange maze of twisted, tangled "worm holes." We might only notice that our absolute clock is turning counterclockwise.

If there is a symmetrical state universe, we can predict that ultimately it is a "balanced" universe in the sense that, whatever happens on either side, whatever scientific formula we may seek to apply, we will always come out with a net balance or a conservation. We can from this infer abductively a relative, original zero-state universe from the balancing out of two contraposed non-zero-state universes.

Of course, it is unlikely we will ever be able to design a spaceship that would allow us to travel to the other side of reality. But it does bring up the possibility of establishing some kind of contact between opposite sides of the reality sphere by either passing through the center of the sphere, (i.e., through a wormhole) or by being able to move beyond its physical perimeters or parameters. In this model, if a sizeable wormhole could be found, it might lead out to the other side, albeit in some other time and place.

I cannot immediately test its predictions or presuppositions in the way that would be required to validate it as a correct view of our most shared world. I fall short, once again, of offering a more complete mathematical formulation of this theory, though I no longer believe that such a formulation is impossible or even so difficult to achieve. Such a formulation will be found if the theory is a correct one. Another way of saying this is that physical reality is ultimately Pythagorean in a non-linear sense. If the theory can be mathematically formulated, then it is likely to be essentially coherent, at least in some partial manner as a "covering law" model.

In running against the grain of the received orthodoxy of standard relativistic cosmologies, we open to ourselves a vast forest of imagination for exploration. But at the same time, we place ourselves on the fringe of the received structure of things, and it is expected that society will attempt not only the marginalization of such a perspective through delegitimization, but even its annihilation as an antithetical symbolic system. This will be rationalized as self-destructive, and "psychologized" as abnormal. This is most unfortunate, as it connects the "wisdom" of our modern enlightened era with the ignorance of past periods marked by intolerance and prejudice.

I seek herein to understand Cosmology as a scientific worldview that is the provenance of every human, and not just of some self-selective and increasingly self-serving elite. And this is not just as religious mythology. I have come to appreciate more finely not only the physical relativity of knowledge that our reality presents to us at every turn, but the larger role and function of the anthropological relativity of our knowledge in both our theories and in our everyday lives.

Having conducted research and taught in China as a post-doctoral anthropologist, the issue of worldview became critical. The worldview of contemporary China is by state definition Marxist and Maoist, and it is, even more frighteningly, Orwellian. It is totalitarian, and no alternative views are tolerated. In such a context, one comes to appreciate greatly the role and value of a coherent world view and the symbolic coherence (or chaos) it may bring to our lives. My Chinese students needed desperately such an un-fragmented view of the world, in order to remain sane and whole in the course of their lives.

Underlying the Kuhnian perspective of paradigms, is a deeper appreciation for the anthropological construction and structuration of knowledge as this occurs situated in social systems. Received points of view have social and symbolic value, and connect directly to questions of legitimization and resource structures in a larger system. It is people who do the knowing, the believing, and the science. This process is increasingly academic by definition, and Academia is increasingly a dependent vassal of larger political economic structures.

American Academia has grown even more rich and powerful than it once was, and has adopted a capitalist model that at points verges upon intellectual totalitarianism. There has been a growing sense of basic discrepancy between received "correct" realities and actual realities that are a part of the common experience of everyday people. To a great extent this reinforces an increasingly closed class structure in everyday American life. The sense of loss it entails is immeasurable, because it has been a loss of possibility, potentiality and opportunity to become other than what it in fact is. This has penetrated all levels, from the most local community colleges to the largest and most prestigious research institutions in the world. Academia continues to dictate the standards of legitimacy by which the rest of us are supposed to think and spin our noetic wheels, but it increasingly fails to comprehend that knowledge cannot in the long run be bought off or monopolized or otherwise politically controlled. The superimposition of intellectual conformity and control cannot in the long run be maintained without ultimately having to resort to some kind of violence somewhere along the way.

When I think of the current human state of affairs, especially in the United States, fraught as it has become with all its contradictions of class and privilege, competition and control, ethnic cleavage and mono-culturalism, I cannot but help think increasingly of the main theme of Erasmus's classic The March of Folly. The quest for truth and realism appears as powerful a call for a free and open mind now as it did back then. Scholasticism seems to be a many-headed dragon that is as self-serving now as it was then. Honesty drives this process, even at the cutting edge of self-sacrifice.

In this comparison we are led to the liar's paradox, which has interesting implications for our understanding of both social reality and physical reality in terms of Gödel's theorem of self-referential undecidability. It goes like this: "The man from Crete said that all Cretan's are liars." We can relate these questions directly to Kantian Antinomies. We might conclude that the universe is infinite or bounded, that it is zero-state or non-zero state, or that it is has something or nothing, and we would probably be fundamentally correct either way we chose. Whatever we do decide, we must understand that we can only frame our understanding in reference to some larger metasystem of which we are ourselves and our knowledge are a part. It is the structure of this larger metasystem, defined in physical terms, with which I am interested intellectually in this work.

In other words, it is people who compete for resources and attention, who can seek to destroy as well as create. We should not thereby confuse the social reification of our conceptual systems as this is promulgated by people with the knowledge of reality in and of itself. Any point of view must be consonant or consistent in some minimal sense with the received ideology of the social system in which such knowledge is situated. It must connect at its limits with the state's larger and more basic ideological and symbolic superstructure. In this way, I believe, we can understand better the history and great momentum that the Big Bang model has achieved in the context of a capitalist World System that cannot ultimately exclude the hand of a God.

The Big Bang becomes like a full stop, a punctuation mark, a final symbolic barrier, to further our inquiry into the structure of physical reality. But it does not end normally in a scientific question mark that invites deeper exploration as would be expected of science. We seek closure in our worlds to keep it consistent at its margins, but science cannot work well within ultimately closed worlds.

All the big and super-gifted number crunchers who have come to superimpose for us a stylish designer view of the physical world, complete with multicultural numerical hype, may have left something self-referential out of all their esoteric mathematical formulations. I call it the baby in the cosmic bathwater. God may or may not cast the dice, but it is certainly the contemporary physicist who is still keeping score. Reality is in the first and last analysis a natural construction that runs on its own logic independent of our abstract systems of deduction. In other words, physics demands a metaphysical framework to render a coherent and non-contradictory view of the world. Science cannot be best served otherwise. Reality is independent of our view of reality, but our knowledge cannot be independent of reality if it is to claim scientific validity.

As an intellectual, I have rejected the role of ideology completely from a scientific worldview. We have to say, ultimately, that the universe was in some mysterious way self-creating, in a stochastic but non-isotropic sense, because God did play dice with the universe. Scientific praxis, to be true to itself, demands this ultimately. Human beings may need religion, more or less, to keep a sane grip upon their worlds. But scientists need most to find the reason for their work and their worldview in the sublime sense of order and beauty that is intrinsic to the natural ordering of reality, without any ideological implication of the supernatural.

If the universe seemed to create itself all in one hot big bang, as most physicists now accept without question, in a cosmic "instant," then we must realize that perhaps this "instant" was without real time as we know it. It could in effect have been forever or essentially timeless. What appears "instantaneous" to us now may in fact have been in essence an eternal process, by our own relative standards at least.

If I rain on someone's parade by suggesting this kind of possibility as scientifically reasonable, in the structure of the long run our vain-glorious parade will come to an end anyway, rain or shine. Whether the universe is expanding or shrinking, or whatever it is doing, reality will keep on spinning its wheels regardless of what we choose to believe or accept as true or not, and regardless of whether people will still be around to watch it happen.

I find enough consolation in the sublime beauty and wonderful order of the natural world, and in our ability to know and feel this as integral to our own identity and being in the world.

*****

Natural systems theory is based upon the notion of the natural stratification of information as self-organizing systems upon multiple, emergent levels, or in a hierarchy of systematic determinations. The excoriation of such a hierarchy permits us a framework of universal analysis within which, at each level of phenomenal patterning, there is an appropriate form and level of analysis and analytical explanation to lower levels. While such emphasis upon analysis is considered reductionist in ignoring synergistic and emergent properties of complex derivative systems, it is nevertheless true that the universe, and all of reality, follows what can be considered to be a Pythagorean structure that lends itself to quantized formulation and parsimonious description. Nevertheless, it is also always only a partial system, being always partly underdetermined as a system. Such systems are therefore always also nonlinear in their partial determinations, and as such exhibit properties that are in some fundamental sense unpredictable and uncontrollable, at least in a classic way.

This work is therefore not just about cosmology as a scientific worldview, but also about our scientific understanding of physical reality that is concomitant to such cosmological conceptioning. How we see reality in fundamental ways determines the outcomes for our cosmological worldview, and how we view our universe determines to some extent how we come to see the essential structure of our physical reality. Reality underlies and gives substance to our cosmologies. Cosmology serves to unite and lend a framework of understanding and analytical experimentation to our view of reality.

It becomes clear in the excoriation of this work that there is critical interaction between our conception of cosmology and our conceptual systems relating to physical reality. The feedback is mostly positive and productive of new insights into our shared experience of reality. And that is how it should be. Not everything proposed within these pages is probably correct, but almost all of it is highly suggestive and therefore remains heuristically useful in producing deeper insight that falls just short of a confirmed and uncontroversial understanding of our universe that must eventually emerge.

Astrophysics is in a state of unsettling chaos now. Many new forms of evidence and ideas are percolating, and old covering law theories are proving inadequate by themselves to take into account all the forms of evidence. Any cosmologist must make at least a pretense at being comprehensive if she is to do her job in any complete way. But a caveat should be emphasized. Such comprehensiveness is likely to be mostly pretence and will likely remain always only partial to the whole story. And this is how it must remain.