Philosophy as a field of study and endeavor has changed a lot through the centuries. In ancient times, Philosophy occupied almost every field of knowledge. Today it is not so. Today Science has stood up on its own feet and many twentieth-century philosophers have claimed it, Philosophy itself, to be dead. Some other philosophers responded saying Philosophy was just beginning.
Today we’ll start what this post is the first of a kind. Here we’ll have random thoughts and ideas about philosophy in general. Let us say our intention is to have a conversation, go to where it will, touch who it may, and this may, with hope, express divers thoughts, sometimes in ancient modes, sometimes in more modern approaches.
Of course, we have no real expectation to answer the questions in the title of this post (O Man, who art thou? Whence camest thou? And whither wilt thou go? [*]) or what might have caused him (and her!) into existence, though they are considered touchstones of the very core and heart of philosophical inquiries.
[*] Old English sentence for:
“Who are you? Where did you come from? Where will you go to?
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Having introduced our aim, we still want to raise a question today.
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It’s about the Big Bang, the most accepted theory that explains how the universe — as we “know” it — began.
Alright, theories get perfected from time to time — an idea in Philosophy of Science to which we’ll come back soon in a future post — so we should not have an absolute stake in the Big Bang story, and, in not having that stake, we should not argument about it. Or should we?
It’s true we should always have that precaution in the back of our minds.
However the Big Bang is probably the best explanation we have for the universe. The body of evidence is huge, gigantic, and too many facts corroborate to give it a large scientific acceptance. But we still don’t know what happened before, no matter how many new theories have come up to give us a hint, a clue, a prospect.
This poses interesting new questions. On the next post, we’ll mention that a beginning of the Universe contrasts with the idea of a Universe that has always existed.
Untill next time!
