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Sidebar 3
How Big is this Universe?
The “Existence Formula” described in this article brings up an interesting question. If object A is you, for example, then non-A is everything that is not you – all the people, animals and other living things, the earth and stars, all the galaxies and super clusters, all of the interstellar dust. Everything. And the more of that “everything” there is, the more precisely you are defined.
But what does that word “everything” mean? Does it just mean the multitude of other things that make up the universe, or are we to take it literally as everything that is possible? For any one person or thing to exist, does everything that is possible also have to exist? The term “Nothing” is pretty encompassing; the not-Nothing would seem to include not just “Something,” but the equally encompassing “Everything.” Remember the Certainty Principle (page 5): The more relationships an object has, the more precisely it is defined; and as the number of relationships – in space and through time – approaches infinity, the object approaches absolute reality. It may be a defining truth of reality that for anything to exist everything must exist.
A few years ago, such an idea would have seemed inconceivable. There are lots of things that may touch the edges of our imagination – a 12-legged, rainbow-spotted troutbird, for example. But its actual existence seems impossible, certainly in any reality that we can understand. But as Richard Dawkins observed, our understanding of reality is programmed by evolution to enable us to function well in a "Middle World" that only informs a small part of a much larger uinverse. "In the vastness of astronomical space or geological time, that which seems impossible in Middle World might turn out to be inevitable."(15) For everything that is possible to exist, we likely need to imagine a bigger reality.
Recent advances in both cosmology and quantum physics may have enlarged our understanding of reality enough to make the notion of “everything” a real possibility. I’ve already mentioned the concept of multiple universes (or multiverses), coexisting and continually being created in a larger reality called “the bulk.” Numerous theories of alternate universes or parallel universes that are a direct implication of quantum theory and astronomical observations currently populate the field of cosmology.
Our universe has its own particular physical properties and natural laws. It is made of matter, energy and gravitational energy, all behaving in observable and predictable ways. It exists as it is because ours is one of the potential forms of existence. As we have seen,
it exists in relationship to all other potential forms of reality, as well as in relationship to Nothingness. Physicists speculate there may be as many as four distinct types of universes(16) ranging from similar universes with different initial conditions to ones with different space-time dimensionality and physical constants to ones with completely different physical laws. The “many worlds” idea envisions a universe that branches out into different copies, one for each possible outcome. It suggests that there may be other universes tangential to the one we each perceive. These other universes branch off every time you make a choice between potential options. As your choices multiply, optional universes (each populated by a different version of you!) multiply exponentially. A virtually infinite number of “superpositioned” universes are thus created by you alone. Multiply those by the number of people making choices pretty much every moment of every day and you end up with an awful lot of reality. Perhaps enough to include “everything that is possible.”
How much stronger then the empowering thought that all of this, not just one small and limited universe but an infinite number of universes comprising all possible realities, depends on you for its very existence. As the object A of this formula, while you need everything else for your existence, everything else needs you, too.
No need to thank God; it’s just the way things are.
(See also the sidebar: Who Do You Think You Are?)