Until the mid 20th century, the prevailing scientific narrative said that the universe was eternal and that the features we observe came about through slow, gradual, materialistic changes. As Carl Sagan intoned in the opening segment of his popular 1980s PBS series Cosmos, “The Cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.”
But is it?
The Eternal Sagan
While Sagan’s claim is overly grandiose — wouldn’t he himself have to be eternal to know these things? — had he made the claim in, say, 1910, he would have at least been correct to say that science operated on the premise that the universe had always existed. Perhaps he could have said “For all we know, the universe is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.”
But science advanced dramatically beginning in the early 20th century. The self-existing-universe paradigm was discarded by the 1970s for the Big Bang model, which holds that the entire universe, including matter and energy and space and time (also called spacetime), began to exist at a zero point in finite history and has been expanding ever since. Until this zero point, nothing material existed.
The human story of this 20th-century paradigm shift is fascinating, but the empirical findings that drove it are even more so. They are — dare I say — captivating. The Story of Everything, which we’ve been discussing here at Science and Culture Today, relates both the human narrative of the shift and the stunning discoveries that propelled it forward. The upcoming theatrical documentary relates more than just these developments, but that story alone is enough to captivate your mind with the wonder of it all.
Display “The Story of Everything | Official Trailer” from YouTube
It is worth noting that the Big Bang model (also called the standard model) had been incorporated into textbooks by 1980, when the first episode of Cosmos aired. Surely Carl Sagan would have known the standard consensus of that time. But neither his 1980s Cosmos, nor its 2014 reboot with Neil deGrasse Tyson, quite follows that science.
Talking About Worldview
When I talk about worldview, one point I try to hammer on is that “Everything starts with origins.” Is the universe we find ourselves inhabiting eternal and self-existing? Or did it have a beginning? I try to drive this point home because, ultimately, how we interpret our world in the present traces back to what we believe about origins. That goes for everyone, including celebrity scientists.
Twentieth-century cosmology has produced evidence to bear on that foundational question, and The Story of Everything brings you a clearer picture of it. Watch for it in theaters April 30–May 6. See here for theaters, showtimes, and to buy group and individual tickets.