What Came Before the Big Bang? Nothing, Time, and Whether the Logos and Aum Have Scientific Standing
All six of the questions people ask about the beginning of the universe, sorted by what kind of claim each one is. The big bang is not an explosion into emptiness but the limit of a theory, and the age of thirteen point eight billion years is a measurement with a live discrepancy inside it. The word nothing turns out to do five different jobs, and every account of creation either begins with something already or dissolves the question. Whether time began is an artefact of the best model, and the deeper puzzle is why it has an arrow. And the Logos and Aum are not scientific claims at all: unfalsifiable is neither false nor validated, though the intelligibility of mathematics and the ringing of the early plasma are two real facts the traditions anticipated in their own languages.
