Contingency

[Panatheist]

A claim was made to me that the cosmos is contingent and this is why physicists are coming up with theories of prior universes "before" the Big Bang, etc.

Do most physicists actually say our cosmos is depebdent on anything for its existence?

[Whateverist]

That depends.

[bennyboy]

A claim was made to me that the cosmos is contingent and this is why physicists are coming up with theories of prior universes "before" the Big Bang, etc.

Do most physicists actually say our cosmos is depebdent on anything for its existence?

Are you confusing "cosmos" with "universe"?

[Panatheist]

A claim was made to me that the cosmos is contingent and this is why physicists are coming up with theories of prior universes "before" the Big Bang, etc.

Do most physicists actually say our cosmos is depebdent on anything for its existence?

Are you confusing "cosmos" with "universe"?

I've been using them synonomously I guess that's not correct.

[Little lunch]

Only in the dictionary. :-)

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Do most physicists actually say our cosmos is depebdent on anything for its existence?

Only the ones with stuffy noses.

Boru

[Panatheist]

Very funny.

[Losty]

I was a little funny...

I wish I knew the answer to your op. Have you found nothing on Google? I know nothing about this stuff.

[chimp3]

Great books by real physicists written for the lay persons abound. Lawrence Krauss, Simon Singh, Brian Greene to name a few.

[robvalue]

I would say no one knows. If I'm wrong about that, I'd be interested to see. There are big problems when trying to "investigate" outside of what may very well be a closed reality of space/time. We hit extrapolation errors and the fallacy of composition very regularly, and we can't back anything up with evidence. Of course, if it turns out not to be closed, there is more hope.

There is a logical problem with assuming contingency, which is that whatever it is contingent on is presumably also contingent on something. This is one of the reasons why "first cause" arguments are so flawed. They just arbitrarily drop the assumption when they've reached their desired point.

It could still have been "created" by something, without being contingent upon this thing's continued existence. Or it could be a manifestation of a process in another reality. Who knows. It appears to me that these are questions beyond the scope of our enquiry, perhaps forever.