2007/10/26 by Philip V. Fellman, Fellman, Philip V., Jonathan Vos Post +5 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0710.5046
17 pages, 2 figures. 7th International Conference on Complex Systems
arxiv created 2007/10/26 · openalex publication_date 2007/10/26 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In this review article we compare the recent work of Peter Lynds, "On a finite universe with no beginning or end", with that of Stephen Hawking, primarily "Quantum Cosmology, M-Theory, and the Anthropic Principle", and two foundational works by Sean M. Carroll and Jennifer Chen, "Does Inflation Provide Natural Conditions for the Universe" and "Spontaneous Inflation and the Origin of the Arrow of Time", in order to evaluate their comparative treatments of the nature and role of causality, time ordering, thermodynamic reversibility, singularities and boundary conditions in the formation of the early universe. We briefly reference Smolin and Kauffman's recent arguments with respect to possible processes of "evolutionary selection" in early universe formation as an alternative explanation to key elements of Hawking's earlier "M-Theory", and its attendant anthropic principle. We also briefly excerpt a short section of Smolin's recent work on topology in quantum loop gravity, simply as an illustrative example of the type of complex quantum topological transformation which he offers as a theoretical alternative to string theory in quantum cosmology.