The Origins of Time

Abstract

0. The fundamental axiom of science and of everyday experience asserts that everything has its history. Also, the universe as a whole turns out to be a “historical being”; contemporary cosmology attempts at reconstructing the cosmic history. “One of the greatest discoveries of science is that the universe also changes with time, and like living systems may well have a kind of birth and death also.” (Davies, 1978, p. 74). But why has the universe its history? This apparently trivial question opens a fascinating research field for theoretical physics. Our attempt to answer this question touches an old philosophical issue—the problem of the origins of time.

“What was so fascinating about this, Jesse thought, was its ordinary nature—the canal, the locks, the noisy water; the town itself ordinary and quiet, as if it had existed for centuries, with a profound certainty of its right to exist, no awareness of the fact that it had no reason for existing, no guarantee of its right to exist. It was here; it moved in a slow, timed orbit.”

Joyce Carol Oates, “Wonderland”