Expanding Universe and Steady-States Universe

The universe visualised by de Sitter is a pulsating system. In this view the entire universe comprising all the galactic systems scattered throughout space, expands during a period of many million years, and, having reached its extreme limit of expansion begins to contract at the same rate. The reason for this, as explained by Eddington, is that two principles operate throughout the universe: the accepted Newtonian attraction between the Milky Way systems, and a principle of cosmological repulsion.

The density of matter in the de Sitter universe is extremely low, so that the force of Newtonian attraction may be considered negligible. This being so, the cosmological repulsion operates without hindrance, and the universe expands. If more matter is somehow introduced into the system, the reciprocal gravitational attraction tends to hold the mass together, and counteracts the expansion. As the amount of matter is increased, so the rate of expansion is retarded.

If such a process takes place it can reach a point at which the Newtonian attraction between the galaxies is just strong enough to equal the cosmological repulsion, with the result that there is no expansion. This is the world as conceived by Einstein, a balanced system. If still more material is added to the mass, the attraction becomes stronger than the repulsion and the result is a contracting universe. Eddington puts forward a further theory, to the effect that “at one time the system expanded itself to much greater size than it is now, that then it shrank and now again expands. Accordingly it was possible that great velocities were produced by a force directed inwards, whilst the inward velocities were converted to outward velocities and in that way the system was forced to. swing through a state of equilibrium.” (Quoted by D. Anton Kropatsch (Vienna) in The Maha Bodhi, Vol. 70, No. 5, 1962)

Tolman is one of those who favour the hypothesis of successive cycles of expansion and contraction of the universe. This state of things, in his view, is due to variations in the material masses in the universe. But it so happens that we are at present aware only of the passing away of matter, and Tolman’s hypothesis seems to require at some stage a creation of fresh matter. It is possible, however, that the radiation dissipated in space somehow transforms itself again into material particles—that is, into electrons, atoms and molecules—and so matter is “reborn.”

Not the same matter, but a force-result (energy-resultant) of matter that has existed previously. These particles would then gather automatically into larger masses, which again through the effect of their own gravitation would become agglomerated into nebulae, suns and finally galactic systems, and in this way the cycles of the universe could go on repeating themselves endlessly.

This view receives substantial support from Einstein’s theory of the equilibrium of mass and energy, and in fact experiments have already shown that the photons of the higher radiation energy, such as gamma-rays, can under certain conditions be transformed into pairs of electrons and positrons. It may be that the law of entropy which we see in operation, whereby the final death of the world seems inevitable, is only a section of a much more comprehensive process—the process, in effect, of the death and rebirth of the universe.

This view affords a striking correspondence to the doctrine Of the death and rebirth of sentient beings as it is understood in Buddhism, for in this model of the universe there is no abiding substance, but only the actual process, as it appears through the cyclic transformations of energy, of recurring situations. Bertrand Russell in The Scientific Outlook joins issue with Eddington and Jeans for professing to see in these theories ground for assuming the operation of a creative principle, and calling it God.

In this conflict of scientific minds Buddhism takes a middle and unique course. It finds no reason for presuming an active and intelligent principle behind the process, but maintains that there is an impersonal law which in its manifestations appears to be intelligent because it is intelligible. Because we ourselves are formed in accordance with the laws of causality, and can become capable of understanding them, it must appear to us at a certain stage that there is a mind similar to our own at work in the processes of nature. Because we find much to approve in the orderly working of the universe, and much that appears to have been designed, we are ready to overlook the many ways in which, from the humanistic point of view, it could have been constructed better.

And -we overlook also the fact that our sense of its design derives from the fact that we ourselves are part of that design, and cannot see it in any other way than that in which it reflects our own nature. In the same way it appears to us that flowers must have been made beautiful for our satisfaction, whereas the truth is that we see flowers as beautiful only because we ourselves are conditioned to see them in that way.

The flower’s beauty is part of its functional design; if circumstances had forced it to be different in every way, our sense of the beauty of flowers would be different also. Our aesthetic values are conditioned by the forms of nature, not the other way round. Similarly, when we see beauty in the mathematical laws of the cosmos, it is not because they emanate from a mind similar to our own, but because our minds are formed in accordance with the mathematics of our world.