Time And The Beginning Of The Universe

If time is instantiated by processes, then asking what happened “before” the universe began? is a misleading question, because without processes, there is no time. This has major implications:

A. Big Bang as the Beginning of Time

• Standard cosmology suggests that time and space emerged from the Big Bang.
• If time is instantiated by processes, then the first actual process is what brought time into being.
• There is no “before” the Big Bang in a meaningful sense, because “before” presupposes time, which did not yet exist.

B. Quantum Cosmology and the Absence of Prior Time

• Some models (e.g., the Hartle-Hawking no-boundary proposal) describe the early universe using quantum mechanics, where time behaves in a non-classical way.
• If time only exists when processes unfold, then at the earliest stages of the universe, time was not a smooth, continuous dimension—it was only instantiated as quantum fluctuations began unfolding.
• This suggests that what we think of as “the beginning” might instead be a phase transition where potential processes became actual.

C. Eternal Inflation and Cyclic Universes

• Some theories propose that our universe emerged from a pre-existing state (e.g., eternal inflation, bouncing cosmologies).
• In this view, time would still have to be instantiated by some process, so even in cyclic models, time isn’t “eternal” in the Newtonian sense—each cycle instantiates its own relational time.

Key Takeaway for Cosmology

👉 If time is instantiated by process, the beginning of the universe is not about a first moment in time but about the first instantiation of process.