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There is No Infinite Universe
tansey: Yes. I meant, not the intellectual understanding, but the sheer feel of one's shoulder in the presence of something that is in a different scale.
voegelin: But that hasn't changed significantly in historical times. Perhaps you get a change when and if the indefinite expansion of space and time is hypostatized into a burden. But that is a mere question of hypostatizing it. It doesn't make any difference–for a man–whether the universe is ten or ten million light years in dimension. The one is as infinite as the other.
o'connor: Or if it's infinite or finite–
voegelin: –it doesn't make any difference–
o'connor: –as far as the experience is concerned. It's so massive. But the infinite universe, in place of the universe bounded by the spheres, must have made a terrible shock.
voegelin: That would be between Copernicus and Galileo. That was perhaps a shock.
kathleen going: The only new experiences are differentiations of consciousness?
voegelin: Yes. All that is involved in the famous Copernican affair was already discovered by Aristotle; he knew it.
o'connor: As far as possibilities were concerned?
voegelin: He was clear that one can construct the universe geometrically–either by making the earth the center of the sun, or vice versa. If you make the earth the center it is on the basis of the empirical observations of his time, and for no other reason. A century later Aristarchus made the sun the center, again for empirical reasons.
If that didn't become historically influential, it was due exclusively to Stoic resistance; there you get a religious dogmatic opposition to making the sun the center because it would destroy the sacrality of the earth. The Stoics were the obstacle, not the Christians.
Aristotle formulated quite clearly what the problem is (as did Parmenides or Nicholas of Cusa): The center of the universe is where its dynamic organizing force sits. That, for Aristotle, is the periphery. His was a periphero-centric conception, not a geocentric or heliocentric one. And the periphery is far away; it's not reachable.
o'connor: What you're saying is there has been no basic change in symbols.
voegelin: No basic change, because experience is always the same: experience of participation in the cosmos.
tansey: Isn't there any way out of that? Is experience always the same?
voegelin: That's what we just talked about. When you start constructing a universe on the basis of physical observation you run into the aporias. Of course there is no infinite universe; the infinite is not the given. You don't experience it; it is a definite construction. If you hypostatize that construction and make it a sort of nightmare, then you can have a nightmare experience. But if you don't make it a nightmare, then it is no matter of interest how many billion light years there are.
tansey: Negatively, though, if you don't look at the organic natural symbols (people know they can make water in the laboratory; they don't see water as something wonderful), wouldn't that shift your imagination?
