A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein, 1954)And since, as history abundantly shows, people's views of the universe are bound up with their views of themselves and of their society, this debate has implications far beyond the realm of science, for the core of the cosmological debate is a question of how truth is known. How these questions are answered will shape not only the history of science, but the history of humanity. The emerging revolution in science extends beyond cosmology. Today the study of the underlying structure of matter, particle physics, is intimately tied up with cosmology - the structure of the universe, theorists argue, is the result of events in the first instants of time. If the Big Bang hypothesis is wrong, then the foundation of modern particle physics collapses and entirely new approaches are required. Indeed, particle physics also suffers from an increasing contradiction between theory and experiment. Equally important, if the Big Bang never occurred our concept of time must change as well. Instead of a universe finite in time, running down from a fiery start to a dusty, dark finish, the universe will be infinite in duration, continuously evolving. (Eric Lerner, 1992)
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