Everything

We live in time, and we live in space. From the daily rise and set of the sun to the changing position of objects around us, time and space are the fundamental framework through which we perceive the world. But have you ever truly wondered: Where do they come from? And did they exist even before the birth of the cosmos?

Time and space are the most basic perceptual structures we have for this universe—the stage upon which all existence plays out.

The Scientific Beginning

From a scientific perspective, the starting point for both time and space is generally placed at the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago. From that instant, time began to flow, space began to expand, and the universe grew from a singularity into the vast cosmic structure we observe today. This remains the most powerful explanation for the universe's origin within mainstream physics.

However, this doesn't automatically mean that nothing existed before "that moment." It simply means our current physical theories are unable to describe the state of being "before."

The Philosophical View

Philosophically, Immanuel Kant proposed a thought-provoking idea: "Time and space are not entities of the world itself, but rather the forms through which humans perceive the world." We perceive cause and effect, movement, and change, and thus we define "time." We perceive direction and position, and thus we define "space." In other words, the universe may be fundamentally beyond time and space, but human perception is constrained by these two structures.

Lao Tzu said: "The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal Name." We cannot fully express the essence of all things with language because our language is a conceptual tool created within time and space. The words "time" and "space" themselves are human constructs used to explain the physical phenomena we observe.

This leads us to a central question: Did time only "exist" after the Big Bang?

The Ping Pong Ball Analogy

Let's use an analogy: Imagine pointing a video camera at a wall made of the darkest material and recording. The screen is pure black; no changes are visible. But is time flowing? Only when I toss a white ping pong ball across the frame do we "see" change and perceive the existence of time and space.

That ping pong ball is like the Big Bang.

Does the absence of the ball mean the recording wasn't running before it appeared? No. It simply means our senses couldn't discern the traces of time and space.

Similarly, time and space might have already "existed" in some form before the Big Bang, only we are unable to detect or define them.

What is "Existence"?

Here, we encounter another problem: "What is existence?"

If something has not been named or observed, does that mean it doesn't exist? Did quantum mechanics not exist before it was discovered? Was an atom not an atom before it was named?

Existence does not equal recognition. Humans simply give names to natural phenomena; we do not create the phenomena themselves.

Even in the realm of mysticism and religion, they generally believe time was created by a deity, who also created humankind. But we can flip the perspective: Is it possible that humanity, evolving within time and space, created the concept of "God" to explain the unknown and fill a spiritual void?

Perhaps "non-existence" is just another way of saying "not yet discovered."

So, was the universe a void before the Big Bang? Was there truly no time and no space? We currently cannot prove it, but we cannot deny that it may have already been there, just in a state that our current knowledge and tools have not yet evolved enough to understand and verify.

Time and space create everything—and perhaps, because we did not create them, we cannot change their form. Therefore, we should approach them with greater humility as we search for their deeper meaning.