The Multiverse is Multiform.
Yggdrasill, The Mundane Tree, Prose Edda by Oluf Olufsen Bagge (1847). Source.
The Multiform Multiverse
To the extent that a multiverse conceptualizes a multiplicity of universes, it is by definition multiple. This multiplicity is internal to the conceptualization itself.
However, there are also multiple ways to conceive of multiple universes. There are two points to take from this. 1) The first, more obvious point is that each conceptualization of the multiverse exists as numerically separate from the others. Now, if each of these conceptualizations described the same multiverse, then we might be compelled to understand this as a uniform multiplicity: many particulars that describe one ideal multiverse.
However, this leads to the second, often under-appreciated point: 2) not all multiverses are the same. Multiverses are not uniform. There are not only numerous conceptualizations of multiverse, but there are diverse conceptualizations; there are different ways to model a multiverse. Multiverses are not only multiple; they are multiform.
To make sense of the multiple worlds and parallel timelines that proliferate, this series will take as its premise the multiform multiverse. From there, we can track the various kinds of multiverses in our world and describe their diverse impacts, especially within narrative.
One way of distinguishing the various conceptualizations of the multiverse is simply by noticing by which means a given multiverse is conceptualized…
I. Theories of the Multiverse
For instance, some multiverses are modeled by purely theoretical arguments. However, there is not simply one theory of the multiverse. Among this theoretical group, different academic disciplines will lead to very different theorizations of “many worlds” or multiverses. For example, the philosophy of modal logic leads David Lewis to posit the existence of a real multiplicity of possible worlds, while the very different discipline of quantum physics leads Sean Carroll to argue for an infinite multiplicity of quantumly forking timelines.
It is important to appreciate that such theoretical multiverses are quite distinct. Both theories do build on the idea of conditional possibility, and consider the real existence of worlds where events have played out otherwise. And it is perhaps possible that the logical possibility of “many worlds” described by Lewis corresponds directly to the physical possibility of theoretical worlds posited by a physicist like Carroll, yet this is certainly not a given and should not be taken for granted. Because Lewis derives his possible worlds from conditions in our everyday language, it deals with the multiplication of linguistic referents like persons and objects and places — thus, in Lewis’s model, the forking of possibles operates at the concrete level of perceptible wholes. Because Carroll’s possible worlds diverge at the quantum level, the splits are many times more numerous, because spacetime might well be forking at all points at subatomic levels.
What is more, even within the same discipline, different theories can lead to different models of the multiverse; for example, Brian Greene catalogues nine different ways to model a multiverse using modern physics, including a holographic multiverse, a simulation multiverse, and a quantum multiverse. Max Tegmark also theorizes a master-multiverse — the ultimate multiverse that contains all multiverses — in his mathematical Theory of Everything. In this way, theory has not settled on one multiverse model, but proliferates multiverses, and multiverses within multiverses.
A scene from WandaVision, S01E03 (2021). Source.
II. Stories of the Multiverse
At the same time, many multiverses are modeled through narrative rather than via theory. This is not to posit an absolute distinction between narrative and theoretical modeling. Clearly, sci-fi narratives often refer to scientific theories of multiverses, claiming to actualize (or at least concretize) the theoretical possibility. However, narratives and theories operate on us in different ways. A narrative appeals to our imagination, and encourages us to imagine meaningful interactions within a particular and perceptible world; narrative does not, like theory, appeal primarily to our reason nor does it rigorously argue for the necessary and general entailment of such a world. So narrative modeling, which is imaginative and immersive, is quite different from theoretical modeling, which is driven by logical or mathematical necessity.
However, narrative does engage us with possible worlds. While Lewis is concerned with logical possibilities in our language (e.g. “They must have just left. Perhaps they went to pick up Chris.”), narrative is also concerned with the “what ifs” of concrete possibilities. Historical dramatizations are concerned with fleshing out how things might have appeared during events recorded in history. Realistic fiction is concerned with possibilities that are only slightly more improbable because they are invented. Fantastical fiction is concerned with possibilities that are relatively more improbable, but which are still structured by a sense of internal probability. All of these different narratives might be understood as modal “possibilities” that are “real” in that they stand in necessary relation to our experience of the actual. This is Lewis’s position. We need the possible in order to think through the actual. Narrative helps us imagine alternate paths, modeling characters who also imagine alternate paths. In this way, narrative can be understood as a mode of imaginative thinking. Also, if narrative does impinge on the theoretical, perhaps the theoretical also at times bleeds into narrative. Certainly not every quantum physicist believes quantum divergence leads necessarily to the multiverse. Is it at all possible that, rather than the math itself, it is the power of the imagination that draws Brian Greene and Sean Carroll toward many and parallel worlds?
I will discuss theorists like Leibniz and Lewis and Carroll and Greene and Tegmark more in the future, but this series is primarily focused on the proliferation of narratives about multiverses. These can easily be dismissed as a passing fad, but they are much, much more!
Below, I provide a schematic menu of some of the narrative multiverses I will explore in this series. All of these multiverses attempt to bridge seemingly disconnected storyworlds, but they do so in drastically different ways. The list is introductory, not exhaustive.
Some Types of Narrative Multiverses:
Stories of Cosmic Expansion: Think Vedas and Eddas.
Stories of Fantastic Travel: Think Blazing World and The Wizard of Oz.
Stories of Sci-Fi Metaphysics: Some common tropes are:
Inter-dimensional travel: Think A Wrinkle in Time and His Dark Materials.
Time-travel: Think Back To The Future or Primer.
Nested simulations: Think The Matrix and Inception.
Stories of Infinite Trial: Think Bandersnatch.
Stories of Spiritual Impasse: Think Groundhog Day and Russian Doll.
Stories of Meta-referential Retcon: Think Marvel comics and movies, think WandaVision.
Stories of Uncanny Break: Think Twin Peaks.
Stories of All Stories: Think Borges’s Library of Babel.
Two Coopers in Twin Peaks, S2:E22 “Beyond Life and Death”
In this series, I will primarily focus on stories that think about multiverses self-consciously, for we still need a more self-conscious understanding of this compulsion toward multiversalizing. It is my belief that our stories are generating so many multiverses these days in order to make sense of our shared existential condition, which is the condition of modernity: the often-uncomfortable if also exhilarating collision of disjunctive, seemingly contradictory, yet highly interconnected realities in our everyday, ever-complexifying lives.
More on this topic next time…
The Swan by Hilma af Klint (1915). Source.
