Over the ages, the human spirit has pondered the question of cosmogenesis. When the religions of the human family gradually gained sway, their respective narratives of the Beginning became embedded in the cultures. These were slowly frozen in the collective psyche of peoples. The inquiries of modern science began to articulate views on cosmogenesis which seem to be different from ancient ones in two important respects. First, they arose from data amassed by empirical studies of the world. Second, unlike religious views, they regarded human beings as only incidental phenomena in the story of the universe. Yet, ironically, new scientific cosmologies sometimes extend and expand on ancient visions.
In the Hindu world, there is a famous Hymn of Creation in the First Book of the Rig Veda, which is the primary scripture in the tradition. This hymn is reflective and imaginative. It is also modest in affirmation, for, after declaring how the World came to be, the seer concludes with two stanzas which reflect a sophisticated skepticism:
Who really knows, and who can swear,
How creation arose, when or where!
Even gods came after creation’s day,
Who really knows, who can truly say
When and how did creation start?
Did He do it? Or did He not?
Only He up there knows, maybe;
Or perhaps, not even He.
According to current scientific thinking, the universe arose as a result of something called symmetry-breaking: This is a technical and mathematical concept. In any case, the result of whatever triggered the big bang birth of the universe was that in an inconceivably small time-interval vast amounts of fundamental entities were spewed.
Prior to the emergence of the universe, there was nothing.Here, it is interesting to recall that Rig Vedic hymn on creation begins with the following verses:
Not even nothing existed then
No air yet, and no heaven.
Who encased and kept it where?
Was water in the darkness there?
Neither deathlessness nor decay
No, nor the rhythm of night and day:
The self-existent, with breath sans air:
That, and that alone was there
For some years during the twentieth century, there were two competing theories to account for the world. According to one, the universe has always existed, without a beginning. This was known as the Steady State model. It encountered some difficulties in the context of an expanding universe in which the galaxies are moving farther and farther away from one another. This galactic recession and other matters are explained more successfully by what is known as the big bang model according to which the universe did have a beginning in space and time.
In a way, the Hindu view might be seen as a synthesis of the two. On the one hand, it looks upon the world as having existed forever. On the other hand, the universe is said to have a finite lifespan. This is possible because the universe is believed to be in one of its never-ending transformations. In other words, our present universe did have a starting point, but it has had countless previous births and deaths. This is very much like the oscillating universe model in which the world expands and contracts and bursts forth again, repeating the process indefinitely. One of the merits of the oscillating universe model is that it solves the problem of the origin of time. Time has always been there, and it will always be.
Spurts of Thought 