Spatiomaterialist cosmogony. The spatiomaterialist alternative to received cosmogony will be presented here in two stages. First, I will show that spatiomaterialism is not falsified by the evidence for the big bang because is has another way of explaining it, a way that make it a better theory, at least in the eyes of ontologists. Then, I will show that there is a variation on it that is an even better explanation of all the relevant evidence, because it also explains certain observations that are currently acknowledged to be puzzling and problematic. I call the first stage of this explanation “the big shrink” and the second stage the theory of “local big shrinks.”

The big shrink. It is possible to explain all the observations offered in support of the big bang theory without supposing that the universe is expanding, because they can be explained at least as well by the shrinking of particles with rest mass in size. Spatiomaterialism assumes that space and matter are infinite in extent and that they have existed from eternity. But let us assume for now that the universe as we know it did begin with a singular event, which is currently called the “big bang.” But instead of assuming that it was like an explosion, let us assume it was more like an implosion. Instead of a big bang, it could have been a big shrink.

This theory assumes that until that point in the history of the universe, space was filled with matter. All the particles with rest mass were so big that they coincided with every part of space. Since according to our theory of the basic particles, the proton never decays, we should think of space as being densely packed with baryons, or triplets of quarks, all existing side-by-side everywhere. There need not even be any electrons, if these baryons were all neutrons. There is nothing inconceivable about infinite space and matter existing in that condition from eternity.

Possibility of big shrink. What is called the “big bang” could have been what happened when all that rest mass matter started shrinking. Assume that the shrinking happened simultaneously everywhere in space. Set aside for now why it occurred when it did. Just suppose that it happened. Our theory about the nature of the basic particles explains how it would be possible.

Such a shrinkage of particles with rest mass is possible, on our theory of the basic objects, because baryons are constituted by both space and matter. If quarks are weakons traveling on twisted circular pathways provided by neutrinos, the condition of matter at the beginning could be explained by the huge size of those neutrinos. The shrinkage of rest mass matter in size could then be explained by the neutrinos shrinking in size. The quarks (and, thus, the baryons) would become smaller, and since there is only a finite amount of matter in any finite region of space, distances between baryons would begin to grow. Thus, the “big shrink,” as I will call it, would not require space to expand.

The strong forces between baryons, mediated by mesons, could have held neutrons together from eternity. But as baryons began to shrink, spaces between them would begin to open up, and at least at the boundaries where empty space appeared, particles and small clumps would break off and start moving and interacting with one another. The strong force is actually a repulsive force at small distance between independent hadrons, tending to keep them apart, but the temperature might be high enough in places for them to fuse again into masses. The weak force would make neutrons decay into protons, leaving electrons to interact independently, and if the temperatures were high enough, they would interact like a plasma. But let me set aside for now the description of how they move and interact in order to focus on the effects of the big shrink on photons and the basic forces of nature.

Photons would be generated in the usual way by the interaction of charged objects. But photons would be unaffected by the shrinkage of rest mass matter, because they are not constituted by neutrinos. They are quantum cycles that coincide with space in a way that moves them along at the velocity of light, though at first they would not be able to travel very far before they were scattered by charged objects.

Nor would the electromagnetic force be affected directly by the shrinking of neutrinos. The electromagnetic field is imposed on space, as we have seen, by electric charges, and they would do so in the same way (which we have assumed involves a universal pulsation in which a 180⁰ phase shift distinguishes negative from positive). Since space is not changed, this reflection of electric charges in space would be the same. However, the particles carrying the electric charges would be much larger, and thus, the electric and magnetic forces would be much weaker relative to the weak force. That is, virtual photons by which the electromagnetic force acts on particles with rest mass would be the same size, but the charged particles would be much bigger and, thus, less affected by their point like charges.

The short range forces would dominate interactions. The weak force is also mediated by gauge bosons, and the main role of virtual weakons is to exert forces that keep the quantum cycles of weakons traveling along their neutrino pathways and to keep the neutrinos lined up as twisted circles in quarks, though they also mediate all the decay patterns of high energy particles. The color force would work the same way, given our theory of the basic particles, because gluons are just how the weak force keeps the quarks lined up either in triplets or quark-antiquark pairs (when the weakons are contorted by traveling twisted circles). Hence, the strong force would work the same way as it does now, except that the mesons would be much larger and its reach would much greater. Since there is a neutral weakon, Z⁰, the weak force could also mediate elastic collisions among particles as well as keeping the basic objects together.

The gravitational force would also work basically the same way with swollen rest mass matter, because on our theory, it is just the effect of accumulations of matter on the inherent motion in space. But there would be one important difference. The particles with rest mass would be much bigger and have much less rest mass. The quantity of rest mass depends on the number of quantum cycles per second involved in their constitution, and with larger neutrinos, the weakons would have farther to travel. Baryons and leptons would, therefore, have fewer quantum cycles per second, or less rest mass. That would affect the sizes of the quantum kinetic cycles by which particles with rest mass move across space, because according to this ontological explanation of quantum mechanics, the wavelengths of the quantum kinetic cycles are scaled according to the mass of the object (that is, constitute momentum, not just velocity). The smaller rest masses of particles together with their swollen sizes would mean, however, that the gravitational force has considerably less effect on what happens.

Compatibility of spatiomaterialism. Unlike the big bang, the big shrink is compatible with spatiomaterialism. It is not necessary to deny that space is infinite nor to believe that space is expanding. And given the spatiomaterialist ontological explanation of the basic particles, we can conceive how the big shrink would work. There would be no change in Planck’s constant, only a change in the size of neutrinos. But as the shrinking of neutrinos continued, the quantum cycles constituting particles with rest mass would speed up. The increase in their rest masses would mean an increase in gravitational force-field matter, because the gravitational force is in proportion to mass and the distances in space across which the force is acting will be increasing. That is, the force-field matter of the gravitational field would increase with the total quantity of quantum matter. But that seems to be a violation of the conservation of matter.

Such an increase in the total quantity of matter in the universe is not, however, unthinkable at this point. It does not pose the same problem for spatiomaterialism as the expansion of space would, because it is possible to conceive how it would happen, even in an infinite world.

To be sure, it does violate the conservation of matter. But we merely used the principle of the conservation of mass and energy as working hypothesis by which to figure out what spatiomaterialism had to assume about the forms of matter in order to explain the natural processes described by classical physics. Having done that, we are now in a position to derive new conclusions about the world from spatiomaterialism. If the universe began with a big shrink, then the total quantity of matter has been increasing ever since. That is just the nature of a spatiomaterial world with the big shrink.

However, at the second stage of this theory, we will see how matter can be conserved, even though its total quantity increases throughout the big shrink.

Explanation of relevant phenomena. As the shrinking of rest mass matter continued after the beginning, physical processes would take place that could explain the phenomena cited as evidence for the big bang. At first, the strong (and weak) force would dominate, holding large clumps of neutrons together as they separated from one another. They would be cool, but energetic interaction would occur only at their boundaries. Assuming that the shrinking were fast enough, the continued shrinking of particles with rest mass would eventually break up the clumps of neutron into smaller clumps and independent baryons along with other particles. But since huge groups of baryons would already be separated by huge distances, the increasing strength of the gravitational force would draw the still swollen matter into collisions with one another where the temperature would be high (relative to their size).

Nucleosynthesis. As some point in the shrinking of matter, the temperature would reach a point at which larger clusters of neutrons would be broken up by the kinetic energy of their interaction and only small nuclei would be stable. Since it would depend on the temperature of their interaction, such a process could give rise to the same proportion of helium and other small nuclei that Gamow predicted.

Background radiation. There would also be point during the big shrink when electrons and nuclei through out the universe would become coupled in atoms, making it possible for photons to travel long distances without interacting with charged particles. The wavelengths of those photons would mirror the swollen sizes and lowered masses of the charged particles that were interacting, and since those elongated photons would not shrink further, that would explain the cosmic background radiation. We are parts of galaxies in which rest mass matter is much smaller as a result of the continued shrinking, and thus, the photons generated when nuclei and electrons were much larger would have a much longer wavelength than photons generated by similar processes on earth.

Hubble’s law. The big shrink would explain why Hubble’s law appears to be true. At some point during the big shrink stars would from, and assuming that the shrinking has continued throughout the universe to this day, the radiation generated by those bigger and slower processes would have a longer wave length. In fact, there would be a correlation between the red shift observed in galaxies and their distances from earth, because light from more distant galaxies would have spent more time traveling before being intercepted by us, and it would be measured as longer by us, since the rest mass matter constituting us would have shrunk more since it was emitted than from galaxies that lie nearer to earth. To be sure, the red shift would not indicate the expansion of space nor the velocity of their recession, but rather how much matter had shrunk since the time the light was emitted. That would require a reinterpretation of Hubble’s constant. However, there would still be a correlation between the red shift and distance, which is the observation in which Hubble based his law about recession velocities. And it would be possible to use the red shift to measure the relative distances of faint galaxies.

It is not impossible, therefore, to explain the three main observations used as evidence for big bang cosmology in another way — one that is compatible with spatiomaterialism. And since the big shrink theory does not have to hold that something comes from nothing, it is prima facie a better theory, if it possible — at least in the eyes of naturalists, who believe that the natural world is constituted by substances that exist independently of themselves.

The possibility of big shrink, instead of a big bang, makes it possible, therefore, to believe that the universe is infinite in every way, except for the finite divisibility of matter. Both space and time are infinite in both senses, being infinitely divisible, or continuous, as well as infinite in extent. Time is eternal not only in the direction of the future, but also toward the past, for it is not necessary to believe that substance comes into existence, as entailed by the big bang theory, though there was a time when the big shrink began. And since space is infinite in extent, the total quantity of matter in the universe can also be infinite, even though there is a finite quantity in any finite region of space.

To be sure, the big shrink does imply that the total quantity of quantum matter in any closed region of space is increasing. But that extra matter does not come from nothing. It comes from the matter that exists at the time and the shrinking of neutrinos. Since neutrinos are just an aspect of space having to do with its interaction with weakons, neutrino size could be just a changing property of space.

The increase in the total quantity of quantum matter in any closed region is conceivable because matter is finitely divisible. The existence of elementary units of matter is the only way in which the universe does not have a twofold infinite in its basic aspects: time, space and matter. And there is, as we shall see, a way that the total quantity of matter in sufficiently large regions of space can be conserved even though quantum matter increases during the big shrink.

There is, however, still a problem about big shrink cosmology, because it does not explain why the big shrink happened when it did. Even if the substances constituting the universe always existed, the big bang still implies there was a change at some moment when rest masses suddenly started shrinking. Why did it happen then?

Local big shrinks. Not only can spatiomaterialism offer a better explanation of the observational evidence used to support the big bang theory than the big bang theory, but like so many times before in this ontological argument, it opens up the possibility of a explanation which heretofore has not even been considered. In this case, the fruitfulness of spatiomaterialism as a way of explaining the natural world is shown by its solution to the problem about when this remarkable event occurs. That is the second stage of the spatiomaterialist ontological explanation of the origin of the universe, the “theory of local big shrinks.” What is more, however, it solves other cosmological puzzles posed by current astronomical observations. Thus, unless this approach is on the wrong track, some such theory as they will make a credible claim to being the best explanation of astronomical phenomena, according to the empirical method of science.

It is not necessary to explain why the big shrink occurred when it did in order to believe that substance has always existed, because its is possible to hold that the big shrink is a local event, rather than a global event. A big shrink could occur repeatedly as time passes, but in different places at different times. That is the theory of local big shrinks. It holds that the universe has always existed pretty much as it appears now.

The theory of local big shrinks is, therefore, a “steady state” theory of the universe. Such a theory was advanced in 1948 by Herman Bondi, Thomas Gold, and independently by its most famous defender, Fred Hoyle. Their steady state theory accepted that the universe was expanding, and it held that matter comes into existence as hydrogen atoms (or, later, so called Planck particles). This was the result of a so-called “creation field,” which is one way of interpreting Einstein’s cosmological constant. A creation field requires new physical processes, but so does the big bang theory. Thus, it was once considered a viable alternative to the big bang theory.

The steady state theory has, however, fallen into to disfavor. It could not explain the cosmic background radiation, when it was discovered. And since it assumes that the universe appears the same way at every moment in its history, it cannot explain the evidence that the universe was previously in a radically different condition. For example, quasars are extremely intense sources of radiation, but since they tend to have an extremely high red shift, they must be far away (according to Hubble’s law), and thus, most cosmologists take quasars to be characteristic of a much earlier era in the history of the universe.

The local big shrink theory is, however, different from the traditional steady state theory. It does not agree that the universe is expanding, but explains that appearance by the shrinking of rest mass matter. And as we shall see, it can explain the background radiation. Indeed, it can explain all the phenomena covered by the big bang theory, including quasars.

The scale of the local big shrink on this theory is roughly that of a supercluster of galaxies. It has recently been recognized that the large scale structure of the universe includes not only stars configured as galaxies, but also clusters of galaxies, and clusters of clusters, or superclusters of galaxies. Indeed, it now seems that there are vast empty regions of space between such clusters of galaxies that look something like soap bubbles because of how they are bounded by galaxies. Let us assume, therefore, that from time to time in such empty regions, very swollen matter comes to exist and starts to shrink as described above. Let me also emphasize some aspects of this process and also refine the assumptions we are making about the big shrink.

We assume that particles with rest mass start off packed together in a swollen condition coinciding with a huge region of space. Assuming it was made of baryons held together by the strong force, it would be like a giant neutron star. Since this matter would be surrounded by empty space, there would be a gravitational attraction that tends to pull all the particles towards the center of mass. It might seem, therefore, that a local big shrink could not develop as described above, because the gravitational force would accumulate enough to cause a giant black hole. But that is not inevitable, for two reasons.

First, the condition of matter at the beginning makes the gravitational force weaker in its effect. The weakons are traveling the pathways of much larger neutrinos in baryons and charged leptons, and thus, those particles are constituted by fewer quantum cycles per second than the same kinds of particles on earth. On our theory, that means that they are not only larger, but that they also have less rest mass. Hence, the gravitational field that they impose on space will be much weaker than it comes to be later on.

Second, let us assume that the shrinking is initially much more rapid than it is later. In fact, we will assume that the shrinking slows down asymptotically to a limit that is not much smaller than matter constituting earth. Though at first, the electromagnetic force is weaker and interactions among basic particles are dominated by the strong force (and the weak force), the rate of shrinkage could be fast enough for spaces to open up between huge clumps of baryons that are still held together by the strong force. These huge clumps of matter would still attract one another by gravitation on the largest scale, but if the shrinking were fast enough, they would remain isolated from one another, and the main role of gravitation on a smaller scale would be to help the strong force hold the remaining clumps of matters together.

The same process of division could occur more than once. As particles with rest mass shrank further, baryons would still tend to stick together because of the strong force, and thus, the clumps would subdivide into smaller clumps, opening up huge distances between them as they continued to shrink. And those sub-clumps of matter might do so again. Such a process could explain the large scale structure of a supercluster of galaxies, that is, the huge distances between clusters of galaxies, between local groups of them, and ultimately between single galaxies.

The rapidity of the initial shrinking means that this phase of the local big shrink would be completed in much shorter period of time than assumed by the big bang theory, because the local big shrink occurs in a much smaller region and it does not require galaxies to spend a lot of time moving away from one another. Instead, the galaxies would “precipitate out” from the original mass of swollen particles as they shrink in size.

Eventually, however, the shrinking of the basic particles would weaken the strong force relative to the electromagnetic force, and the strong force, together with gravity, would no longer be able to hold matter together in huge clumps. In addition to the kinetic energy of the collision among masses of baryons, the repulsive electromagnetic forces between protons would help separate them, and the short range repulsive force between baryons that are not bound together by the strong force would keep them separate. Thus, baryons would break up into smaller and smaller clusters and eventually into individual baryons.

As the shrinking continued, the temperature would fall, because the distances separating baryons and bunches of baryons would increase. Gravitation would be pulling them into regions of dense collisions, but they would still be too swollen and light to form stars. This is the point at which the “nucleosynthesis” that explains the proportion of helium and other simple nuclei in the universe would take place. Large groups of baryons would be unstable at that temperature, but simple nuclei would be stable and remain stable as the temperature fell.

Not long after that, electrons would couple with nuclei to form atoms, and since photons would be able to travel much longer distances, more photons would escape into the space beyond these more or less isolated clusters of matter, and there would be a vast increase in the radiation from them. That would account for the cosmic background radiation, because matter would still be swollen enough for the photons released to have longer wavelengths. The size of the particles would make it appear that it is a 2.7⁰ Kelvin blackbody radiation, though actually it would be a much higher temperature relative to swollen rest mass particles. To be sure, photons with even longer wavelengths would have been emitted by clusters of matter prior to that, when matter was even more swollen. But that radiation would not be nearly as intense, because photons could come only from the edges, as the radiation from stars. When the region became transparent, however, photons could also escape from throughout the clusters of matter, and that is what is observable.

By this point, the “precipitation” from the shrinkage of matter would already have isolated galaxies from one another and, presumably, made the distribution of matter in each galaxy somewhat uneven. But since particles with rest mass have been shrinking in size and increasing in rest mass, the total mass accumulated in these local regions would increase and gravitation would begin to play the dominant role in what happens.

To be sure, from the beginning, gravitation would have been attracting clusters of matter toward one another, and that attraction would also increase as rest mass increased. But since, initially, gravitation was not strong enough to keep up with the effects of shrinking, clumps of matter would separate off from one another leaving vast distances between them that gravitation could not overcome quickly enough. Thus, gravitation would wind up exerting much the kind of attraction among galaxies that is observed now.

Within each galaxy that precipitated out during that earlier process, however, the continued shrinking of matter would increase the effective gravitational force, because fermions would be smaller and have greater rest masses than ever. Gravitation would play two roles at this stage, pulling matter throughout the galaxy towards its center and turning regions of relatively denser accumulation of matter within each galaxy into stars.

The gravitational attraction at the scale of an entire, separate galaxy would create enormous pressures at the center, where matter would accumulate, and with smaller, heavier particles, it would be enough in most galaxies to create giant black holes which would gobble up all the extra matter that had accumulated at the center. They would give off, at least for a while, enormous quantities of energy as matter tried to spiral into them, and their magnetic fields might even spew out prodigious quantities of particles in certain directions at enormously high velocities. And the gravitational field centered on such a black hole would organize the motion of matter throughout the galaxy.

On a more local scale, gravitation would cause the formation of stars of various sizes. Regions of highest density would tend to be the first to form stars, and those giant stars would explode rather quickly as supernovae, spewing heavy nuclei throughout the regions around them. Smaller would form from smaller variations in density, and since most of them would form later, the planets that formed out the matter spiraling into them would be rich in atoms with heavy nuclei.

[Perhaps, some aspect of the process of galactic development by “precipitation” from the local big shrink would even account for the observations that now lead to the belief that there must be a great deal of dark matter that exists in an unusual form.]

The formation of a black hole and stars would give galaxies the appearance they now have, for matter would be much smaller and heavier, radiating photons with much shorter wavelengths. Visible light would make galaxies observable from great distances, and their spectra could be examined by astronomers. Assuming that the shrinking of matter had not quite reached its asymptotic limit when it was emitted, a red shift is precisely what we would expect to observe from earth, where the shrinking has gone on longer. On the other hand, assuming that earth is very close to the asymptotic limit where matter stops shrinking, it would also explain why there are no galaxies with a blue shift, as one would expect, if the shrinking went on.

The theory of local big shrinks would imply, nevertheless, that Hubble’s law is false. Since local big shrinks would be occurring at different times at different locations throughout the universe, there would be no general correlation between the red shift of a galaxy and its distance from earth, as Hubble concluded from his observations. But that does not necessarily falsify the theory of many local big shrinks.

The reason it escapes falsification is the difficulty in measuring the distances to faint galaxies. Hubble was able to measure galaxies only up to about ten million light years away, and even current attempts to extend the range of independent measurement of distance beyond that do not yield reliable, independent readings of distances to galaxies beyond our supercluster of galaxies. The most reliable measurement of distance depends Cepheid variable stars, whose intrinsic brightness is known, but it does not reach beyond our own Virgo cluster of galaxies, that is, about 50 to 75 million light years away. And though supernovae and sheer brightness of galaxies can be used beyond that limit, the reliability of those standards has not been established.

The correlation between red shift and distance within our supercluster of galaxies is what would be expected, according to the theory of local big shrinks, since it assumes that all those galaxies were generated at roughly the same time by the same local big shrink. The red shift of a distant galaxy within our supercluster would be explained by the length of time that light has been traveling since it was emitted, since both our galaxy would have been shrinking further during that entire period. Thus, the red-shift of a galaxy would be a good indicator of the relative distances to galaxies within our supercluster.

Disagreements about Hubble’s constant tend to cluster around two different values, one yielding about 20 billion years as the age of the universe and the other yielding about 10 billion years. That disagreement may be due, in part, to the attempt of one group of astronomers to measure the Hubble constant by more distant galaxies, some of which are beyond our supercluster, where it is much more difficult to measure distance.

Thus, it is possible to reject Hubble’s law as a misinterpretation of data from relative nearby galaxies in terms of the big bang theory and its assumed expansion of the universe. But recognizing its falsity would revolutionize out view of the universe, because red-shift would no longer be a reliable way of estimating the distance to faint galaxies.

Not only can the theory of local big shrinks explain all the phenomena on which big bang cosmogony is based, but there are observations that can be explained only by the theory of local big shrinks. For example, there is accumulating evidence of stars whose lifetimes are longer than the lower estimates of the age of the universe based on Hubble’s constant. But the most spectacular fallout is that it explains the observation of quasars.

Quasars are extremely red-shifted light sources that seem far too intense to be located as far away as they seem to be according to Hubble’s law. Its radiation is typically much more intense than the rest of the galaxy of which is a part. The radiation seems to come from something like a star, because its strength can vary too quickly for an entire galaxy to be its source. And it is widely assumed that the only currently plausible such an enormous quantity of energy is a giant black hole which is drawing large quantities of matter beyond the event horizon (at the Schwartzschild radius). But since they have much greater red shifts than is measured in galaxies from our supercluster, they are assumed to have existed very early after the big bang. Relatively few have less than an enormous red shift of z = 2, that is, with wavelengths twice as long as those generate by similar processes on earth, and some, with red-shifts approaching z = 5, seem to come from sources that existed as long as 12 billion hears ago. Twelve billion light years is an enormous distance in space, and it is quite astonishing that we are receiving light from a source that far away, because it means that the universe must be completely transparent throughout a sphere with that radius.

However, all these observations are precisely what would be expected on the local big shrink theory. As we have seen, it is likely that black holes would form early in the history of isolated galaxies because of the accumulating gravitational forces at the centers of those clusters of matter. Their formation early in the history of galactic development would explain their relatively greater red-shifts, because at that point in their development, particles would still be quite swollen. Assuming that the sizes of the particles varies with the wavelengths of the photons that their interactions give off, it would mean that matter at that stage is from two to five times the size it is on earth. The intensity of the radiation could be completely explained by its origin in a black hole, because quasars could be located so much closer to earth that would be required by Hubble’s law (though those with high red-shift must be located beyond our supercluster of galaxies). And this theory does not require us to believe that the universe is so transparent that photons can travel without being intercepted for 12 billion light years in every direction from earth.

Thus, quasars cannot be used as evidence against the theory of local big shrinks. It is much more likely that they are not how the universe looked early on after the big bang, but simply how it would look anywhere in the universe where the local big shrink had reached the stage at which galaxies were separate and black holes began to form at their centers.

But there is still one ontological objection to the theory of local big shrinks. Even if the universe as a whole is eternal and infinite, this theory seems to imply that matter is coming into existence, which contradicts the assumption of the conservation of matter (though not the more basic ontological principle that something cannot come from nothing). Where would the matter for the big shrink come from?

Again, however, spatiomaterialism seems to have an answer — an answer that also has to do with black holes. The one puzzling feature about black holes is what happens to the matter that falls into them. If there is a singularity at the center of the black hole, as seems required by the infinite force there, the matter seems to just disappear forever from the universe. The size of the Schwartzschild radius is the only indication of how much matter has disappeared into it.

However, that loss would not be permanent, if black holes were the source of the matter that shows up in local big shrinks. The laws of physics do not cover conditions as extreme as those that hold for the singularity in the center of the black hole, and thus, it is possible that matter is transformed into an aspect of space, that is, into a condition of space that could be the source of the matter that shows up as local big shrinks. This condition would hold only when enough matter had been gobbled up by black holes in the galaxies surrounding some vast empty region. But it is possible that when space has absorbed enough matter through those black holes, it gives birth to a big shrink in the nearest vast region of empty space between superclusters of galaxies.

There may be no need, therefore, to believe that the matter that comes to exist at the beginning of the local big shrink or the matter that comes to exist as particles with rest mass shrink and become more massive is coming into existence our of nothing. Instead of the “creation field” of earlier steady-state theories, what is needed is only a transformation field, in which matter absorbed by space from black holes re-emerges as a local big shrinks.

That is a process that could go on forever. Matter would be recycled, and the universe need never run out of room, for gravitational attraction would always be shrinking existing superclusters of galaxies away from some huge region of empty space or another. But it could mean that all galaxies are ultimately destined to be consumed by black holes.

No doubt, this theory of local big shrinks needs further refinement before it will be fully reconciled with what is known about physical processes. But it illustrates what could be true, if this is a spatiomaterial world and physics is explained ontologically.  

 

Conclusion about local regularities. What has been established by Cosmology, and more broadly, by this ontological explanation of contemporary physics?

It is clearly not a necessary truth of ontological philosophy. This spatiomaterialist ontological explanation of the basic particles of physics and the origin of the universe is, like its explanation of quantum mechanics, more speculative than that. It is obviously incomplete, for there are many quantitative details to be filled in. And it would be surprising if it is not mistaken in some ways, especially the theory of the big shrink. What I have said above will have to be changed, not merely expanded.

Even what has been said about Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity is not a necessary truth. It is also just an ontological explanation of the truth of relativity theory. But I do claim that it is closer to the truth that contemporary physics. That is what needed to be shown to pay off the mortgage on spatiomaterialism and use it as the foundation for ontological philosophy. But I do not mean to make such a strong claim for what has been said about quantum mechanics, the basic objects, and cosmogony. They are more speculative, and I suspect that there still much gold to be mined in the hills of the theory of local big shrinks.

What I believe has been show in these past two chapters, on Quantum mechanics and Cosmology, is that some such theory is probably true. It is possible to give an ontological explanation of the truth of quantum mechanics, high energy physics, and big bang cosmology based on spatiomaterialism. That shows, at least, that spatiomaterialism cannot be rejected by claiming that it contradicts what has been discovered empirically in any of the fields of physics. But it also shows the fruitfulness of spatiomaterialism in physics.

The widely acknowledged problems about the theories in these fields of physics make them a rather flimsy foundation for denying a theory of empirical ontology. Though the big bang theory, for example, is warmly embraced by popular culture, where mystery and faith live comfortably with relativism, it is held with much less confidence by physicists, if only because they are, as naturalists, more inclined to believe that that the natural world is constituted by substances that exist independently of themselves. Though it is not an explicit principle of science, it simply does not make much sense to hold that something can come from nothing. Puzzles in the other fields likewise make scientists more skeptical than dogmatic. Few scientists would claim that physics has already discovered the deepest truth about the nature of what exists.  

By saying that spatiomaterialism is fruitful in physics, I mean that it opens up new ways of explaining the observations made by physics. But to show that there is no reason to doubt that some ontological explanation along the lines of those given here is also to show that some such theory is probably true, because any such theory would explain more of the phenomena and explains it better than physics does at present.

What explain the power of spatiomaterialism to cast new light on physics is the difference between ontological-cause explanations and efficient-cause explanations with which we began in the Foundation of ontological philosophy. Instead of trying only to discover the laws by which it is possible to predict and control what happens, empirical ontology tries to discover the substances that would explain why those laws are true. In addition to efficient causes, it seeks ontological causes.

In these chapters on contemporary physics, we have seen what ontology can add, when it infers independently of empirical science to spatiomaterialism as the best ontological explanation of the natural world. Whereas physics relies on mathematics to represent the quantitatively precise relationship among properties by which it can predict the outcomes of measurements, ontological philosophy relies on our spatial and temporal imagination to represent geometrically the substances whose aspects are those properties.

The kind of mathematical representations used by physics are based on Cartesian coordinates, and that means that everything can be reduced to algebra, that is, basically, arithmetic. As we saw in Relations, the explanations of the truth of arithmetic and geometry are independent on one another. One comes down to counting units, while the other comes down to representing spatial relations spatially (or, more accurately, as we shall see, spatio-temporally), and both can be shown to correspond to aspects of a spatiomaterial world.

The power of ontological philosophy to illuminate contemporary physics comes from how spatiomaterialism adds spatial and temporal imagination to the more abstract mathematical imagination that is the workhorse of physics. Keep in mind that ontological-cause explanations do not replace efficient-cause explanations, but rather explain their truth. That provides a deeper explanation of the world, because it adds constraints that are understood through spatial and temporal imagination to constraints that are understood through mathematical manipulations. The puzzles in physics arise from the limitations inherent in its mathematical representations, mainly its attempt describe physics with nothing but the algebraic representations introduced by Descartes, and spatiomaterialism sheds light on physics, because it shows how it is possible to use spatial and temporal imagination to impose additional constraints on our beliefs about the world. And that is what I believe has been shown in these past four chapters. It points the way to new physics, a physics that is ontological. Some such ontological explanation of physics is possible.

In order to refute this argument, in other words, what is required is a proof that no such theory is possible. It is not enough to point to details that have not been explained. Nor even to point out ways that it is mistaken. I would be surprised if there were no mistakes in these theories. But goal in formulating them has not been to avoid small errors, but to show a larger truth. I believe I have done that. And to show that I have not, it is necessary to show that no spatiomaterialist  ontological explanation of the truth of physics can be given. Having answered the challenge that contemporary physics might be thought to pose for the belief that this is a spatiomaterial world (and solved, in the process many of its unsolved problems), that is the challenge I make to physicists.

This concludes the ontological explanation of local regularities, but that is not all that is regular about change in a spatiomaterial world. We have been focusing, as physics usually does, on regularities about the motion and interaction of bits of matter that can be described relative to those bits of matter. We have seen the role that space plays in their explanation. But since the bits of matter all coincide with parts of space, space plays another role in making change regular, namely, how the wholeness of space makes the change that occurs in whole regions of space regular. That is what will be taken up at this point, and the conclusions to be drawn from that part of the argument are necessary truths of ontological philosophy. What will be said global regularizes does not depend on the truth of this ontological explanation of the truth of physics, because except for the implications of quantum mechanics for chemistry, it does not depend on contemporary physics at all. However, just as in the explanation of contemporary physics, the power of spatiomaterialism to cast light on what has been discovered empirically by these less general branches of science comes from how it adds a constraint to its conclusions that is understood through spatial and temporal imagination. And what is more, those conclusion will include an explanation of the nature of the faculty of imagination that makes it possible.