Physicists, cosmologists, and metaphysicists have many unanswered questions like, “How did the universe begin?”, “Are there other universes beyond our own?”, “What is the true shape and geometry of the universe?”, “What are the fundamental constituents of matter and their interactions?”, “Why is there something instead of nothing?”, and the Biggie, “How did the universe come into being?”  Some physicists brush off the last question by proclaiming it emerged from “a quantum fluctuation” in the vacuum.  But as John A. Wheeler observed, “The quantum theory of fluctuations of geometry tells us that the concepts of ‘before’ and ‘after’ lose all application at distances of order the Planck length or less.  If the concept of time fails anywhere, it must fail everywhere.”  Wheeler eventually arrived at his own conclusion, “Omnibus ex nihil ducendis sufficit unum (one principle suffices to obtain everything from nothing).”  The search for that one principle occupied much of Wheeler’s time near the end of his career, and he sometimes expressed it as a “self-excited circuit” based on the principle that “the boundary of a boundary is zero.” Gottfried Leibniz defined the fundamental unit existence using a concept known as Monadology, wherein monads are the simplest, most basic units of existence, characterized by their internal activity, each perceiving and reflecting existence from its own unique perspective.  The following essay is explores the idea of how time and space could have emerged from nothing – a dimensionless, boundless, timeless, and spaceless Source – followed by everything else called physical reality.

1. The Source
Metaphysics of an Amateur Scientist
By John J. Winders, Jr.

2. Note to my readers:
You can access and download this essay and my other essays directly from the Amateur
Scientist Essays website using this link:
https://sites.google.com/site/amateurscientistessays/
You are free to download and share all of my essays without any restrictions, although it
would be very nice to credit my work when quoting directly from them.
If you would like to leave comments via email, you can send them using this link:
mailto:Amateurscientist@hotmail.com

3. The late physicist John Archibald Wheeler was fond of saying, "The boundary of a boundary is zero"
when explaining his concept of the universe as a "self-excited circuit." This statement is mentioned no
less than 27 times in Amanda Gefter's book, Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn. Gefter, along with
scientists she interviewed in her book, were unsure exactly what Wheeler meant by that statement.
From the voluminous notebooks Wheeler left behind, it seems he was attempting to boil down all of
physical reality into some fundamental metaphysical Law or Principle that possesses no attributes or
dimensions of its own. In other words, I believe he was trying to describe how everything is derived
from essentially nothing. This essay summarizes my own interpretation of what Wheeler meant.
In topology, the "boundary of a boundary is zero" is a straightforward concept. It can be represented
symbolically as ∂∂= , where symbolizes the null set { }. A boundary implies dimensionality, which
∅ ∅
can be represented geometrically. A space having N dimensions has a boundary of N-1 dimensions. A
point, aka a singularity, has zero dimensions, 0D. Obviously, a point cannot have a boundary of zero
minus one dimensions, so a singular point is boundless. However, a 0D point can be the boundary of
1D space by unfurling itself into one dimension. How many different kinds of objects can there be in
1D space? There is only one possible kind, i.e. a straight line bounded by two 0D points.
We humans think of time as a linear progression of individual, separated events. The first figure
labeled “1D time” in the illustration below shows linear time bounded by two 0D points. This presents
a problem: How can events be separated in 1D space along one continuous time line if one event
begins before another event ends? The way for multiple events to coexist in time is to unfurl 1D time
into 2D space as shown in the second figure labeled “2D time” below.
The boundary of 2D time is a 1D straight line that has unfurled in two dimensions as a circle, becoming
a boundary without having its own a boundary. Symbolically, ∂{circle}= . The 2D area within the
∅
circle provides space for multiple, overlapping events to all exist simultaneously as a hologram in the
Now moment, shown as the blue area inside the circle. Each event in the hologram spreads throughout
the entire area, with the area and its boundary expanding moment-by-moment.
The third figure labeled “2D time / 3D space” above shows 2D time unfurled in a third dimension,
forming an expanding blue temporal boundary around a spatial yellow sphere. The boundary retains
the property of curvature from 2D time, meaning time expands asymmetrically and irreversibly into the
“future.” It also retains the properties of a hologram, where every event occurring in a given “Now”
moment occurs across the entire curved 2D surface. The 3D interior space expands as the 2D temporal
boundary expands; however, interior space is not curved, but is absolutely flat. Three-dimensional
flatness is required in order for linear and angular momenta to be conserved as prescribed by Noether’s
theorem, space having both translation and rotation symmetry. Another feature of 2D time / 3D space
is that its geometry is hyperbolic instead of Euclidean. As the temporal boundary expands, the
- 1 -

4. expanding hyperbolic spatial 3D sphere serves as a holographic repository for all events having
occurred in “past moments.” The details of the 2D time / 3D space model are described much more
fully in my earlier essay "It from Bit". By the way, “it from bit” was one of Wheeler’s short, pithy
phrases to describe how space, time, matter and energy are derived from information.
The temporal Beginning exists at the center of the 3D hyperbolic sphere; however, the interior of the
sphere is timeless. Light exists in the timeless interior as quanta (photons) that are spread throughout
it. A light quantum is literally everywhere in space at the same time because space and time collapse
around anything traveling at the speed of light with respect to a material observer, a consequence of the
Minkowski equation, below, which is the foundation of special and general relativity.
c2
Δs2
= c2
Δt2
– Δx2
– Δy2
– Δz2
In this equation, c is the speed of light, Δs is distance along a path through spacetime, t is time, and x,
y, and z are the three spatial dimensions. The speed of light is √Δx2
+Δy2
+Δz2
/Δt=c in all reference
frames; thus, according to the Minkowski equation, Δs =0 for light. In other words, although light
appears to travel through space at the speed of light to physical observers, light is actually everywhere,
all at once in spacetime. Furthermore, light doesn’t experience the “passage of time” in the usual sense
of proper time measured by a clock, since Δs is equivalent to proper time.
The other reason why space must have three and only three dimensions is because light is both an
electromagnetic wave and a particle. As a wave, it consists of an electric field vector, E, a magnetic
auxiliary field vector, H. The cross product of the two is the Poynting vector, S= E×H, which aligns
in the direction of propagation of the electromagnetic wave in space; however, the cross product of two
vectors can only be consistently defined in 3D space.
The final step in the creation of our universe is shown in the figure labeled “4D spacetime” in the
figure on the preceding page. The three-dimensional 2D time / 3D space object unfurls in the fourth
dimension to form the Minkowski space/time manifold, where time and space are no longer separated,
but are combined into a spacetime continuum.
There are many more details the reader can find concerning the metaphysical model briefly described
here in my other essays, including one describing an entropic model of gravity.1
The takeaway from
this essay is as follows: Working backward from “4D spacetime” to “1D time” we see the fundamental
boundary as being a dimensionless singularity that unfurls into two dimensionless points to become the
boundary of linear 1D time. The singularity is boundless because having zero dimensions, there is no
lower dimension that can serve as its boundary.
But what exactly is this dimensionless singularity that is the boundary of everything, and itself is
boundless? It has various names, such as Brahman (the supreme and eternal essence or spirit of the
universe), I Am, Consciousness, and many others, but I prefer to call it The Source. It should be noted
The Source can represent everything (the infinite set of possibilities), and it can also represent an empty
set, , because combining everything cancels everything to equal essentially nothing. Take the set of
∅
all numbers. For every possible number, n, there is a negative number that cancels it, so {Σn}= .
∅
The empty Source realizes itself as something by bounding itself with its boundless self, 0D=∂{1D}.
The process continues: 1D=∂{2D}, 2D=∂{3D}, and 3D=∂{4D}. Overall, 0D=∂∂∂∂{4D}= ; in
∅
short, everything that comprises physical reality is derived from a boundless, dimensionless Source,
being both everything and nothing.
1 Refer to "Gravity: Superstrings or Entropy?", "Universe on a Tee Shirt" and "The Hidden Secrets of General Relativity
Revealed"
- 2 -