(This is the beginning of “Impansion: The Shape of Complexity”, unpublished manuscript by Andoni Irigoien)
Epigraph
Even our deepest and most abiding concepts—time, events, causation, morality, and mind itself—are understood and reasoned about via multiple metaphors. In each case, one conceptual domain (say, time) is reasoned about, as well as talked about, in terms of the conceptual structure of another domain (say, space).
—George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Metaphors We Live By)
Introduction: The house in fire
Do you think a cow is bigger than an atom? How sure are you? Could you imagine a universe where atoms are bigger than cows? If you can, I need you.
I will tell you why. In the spring of 2020, I cycled north along the coast of West Africa when I was COVID-confined in a quiet fishing town. I was eager to write a science-fiction book I had been chewing on. I had a unique story and the perfect plot, yet I felt them incomplete without a global picture of the universe. So which of the Big alternatives provided by science was more inspiring to understand what I wanted to express?
For example, we have the Big Bang model. Cosmologists rely heavily on it, so any plausible alternative should explain why we envision an infinitely small, dense, and hot point as the beginning of everything. That point is usually called an initial singularity.
Several calculations also show that the universe continues expanding at an increasing rate. Hence, we need additional metaphors, such as the Big Rip, which describes the infinite expansion of the universe into a universal heat death (a final singularity). The Big Crunch provides the opposite picture: the universe collapses into the initial singularity again. There are also diverse variants of consecutive, parallel, or pocket multiverses.
Finally, cosmologists have figured out gravitational singularities. They believe that virtually all large galaxies contain a giant black hole with a central point tearing spacetime off and squashing anything that dares to cross some horizon.
These theories were inspiring for my book, but my prior training as a lawyer had provided me with a good nose for deceptive arguments. For example, the Big metaphors reference spatial and temporal terms like “expansion” to singularities. This practice is fishy because singularities are originally unrelated to space and time. Moreover, singularity is a technical synonym for infinity, which initially meant “without boundaries.” So how can something boundless expand? Besides, what separates all these infinity points from what we consider finite? If our physics theories work from any point of view (always and everywhere), such a frontier should not exist. Thus, how can there be singularities severed from us?
Suddenly, a thrilling metaphor came to my mind. I was the only inhabitant of a three-floor Saharan residence with many tiny rooms and a top terrace. Indeed, I was a peculiar ghost since the Moroccan government had commanded all hotels to close.
So imagine you are there, open any window and see fire. Flames rise through the front door, the courtyard, and all over the terrace. Furthermore, imagine a million windows shooting sparks. Tell me, how many fires are there? I am sure you would not make a hole between the windows expecting to find a safe escape. Instead, you would immediately understand there is only one big fire, and the house is inside it.
Similarly, we calculate infinities all around us, so why not interpret ourselves inside a unique infinity? That idea radically changes the whole picture. Suppose we understand infinity in terms of size. Then, our universe should be ever more infinitesimal, a kind of impansion.
“Impanded” is a new concept meaning “expanded infinitely inward.” Hence, impansion does not end in a collapse like an implosion. Instead, complexity transforms without substantial spacetime and matter, meaning that size is a tricky concept.
Another way to state the same idea is the following. Singularities are sizeless by definition. Therefore, why do we imagine the Big Bang outward instead of inward? Are we mistaking an impanded reality for an expanding one?
At first, it was a funny idea. Then I tried hard to find scientific arguments against it. Indeed, I revised everything I knew about physics, mathematics, psychology, and philosophy. Fortunately, I failed to find why reality should not be infinitely small and brief. Moreover, central historical issues of many disciplines acquired new light from an impanded perspective. These were exciting days. When my knowledge was exhausted, I continued studying new subjects. I still do.
For some time, I believed I had found the actual shape of the universe. Later, I was better aware of what I had achieved. I had built a concise system of metaphors complementary to the foundational metaphors of science:
- Impansion is the initial, paradoxical idea stating that the biggest can be inside the observer. It suggests that ultimate reality does not consist of size or mass.
- Impansion also implies that time shrinks into a timeless instant. I call this idea the “quasar metaphor.”
- Harmonic complexity, used as a metaphor, helps understand how we can experience distance, duration, motion, and mass in a sizeless and timeless reality.
- Finally, the “thread metaphor” evokes that light[1] makes spacetime instead of traveling through it.
In short, figuring out a big universe containing material things is beneficial, even necessary, to develop modern mathematics, science, and technology. However, the benefit has a price. Thinking that spacetime is the ultimate description of reality leads to severe problems interpreting the whole. Some of the most ubiquitous issues are singularities and the nature of the human mind. Others are more concrete but inspiring, like giant black holes at epochs of the universe where they should not exist.
Impansion can dissolve these problems before your eyes. It helps you reinterpret the current scientific theories so that our physical experience emerges subjectively from a sizeless and timeless background. But beware! Subjective does not mean “inside our minds” anymore because impansion merges inside and outside. As a result, every structure becomes a legitimate protagonist of a corresponding universe.
This book will present the new metaphors (chaps. 1, 3, and 5) and show you how to alternate them with the traditional ones in a game called “Big Bangers and impanders” (chaps. 4, 6, and 7). After the playing, I will take some last pages (ch. 8) to nuance both roles and discuss the game itself. For example, I will be able to explain why we need to use different systems of metaphors to address human experience:
Since we understand situations and statements in terms of our conceptual system, truth for us is always relative to that conceptual system. Likewise, since an understanding is always partial, we have no access to “the whole truth” or to any definitive account of reality.[2]
As you see, impansion requires tempering the popular belief about some objective reality. I will dedicate the second chapter to that task. Nothing more I could say now would help you confront impansion. We cannot talk about it before you see it. If I fail on that, every possible explanation will have been useless. Of course, previous knowledge helps, but the principal requirement is imagination
Notes
[1] Throughout the book, I will refer to electromagnetic radiation as light. Visible light constitutes a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum, which has no known absolute limits.
[2] George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 180.
(End of the Introductory Chapter. Click here to return to the original post)