Matter is endlessly diverse. The material world is a myriad of objects, phenomena, events, processes, relationships, and relationships. To reach them all without exception, that is to know all matter at once, science is incapable, at least for the obvious reason, that the moment when man began to study the outside world is far from today to a finite interval of time. Therefore, science at any level of its development is able to capture and actually cover only a certain range of phenomena, processes, relationships, and relationships.
In the course of its practical activity, a person allocates from the infinite diversity of the material world a finite number of objects, phenomena, relationships, relationships, interactions: builds a scientific picture of the world. A picture that develops as knowledge accumulates, reflecting the ever-deeper patterns of the universe. Thus, the scientific picture of the world is the ultimate "slice" of an infinitely varied objective reality.
If the universe we are studying today emerged 20 billion years ago, then from a philosophical point of view it is important to recognize the objective nature of this process as a cosmic stage of self-development of matter. It is a matter of specific science - physics to understand and describe this process. It is possible to think. and the existence of many Universes with complex topologies, so it is expedient to distinguish the term Universe of the Naturalist, which denotes our information about the Universe accumulated at this point in time, from the philosophical notion of the material world. it reveals in its hidden from all future achievements in the doctrine of the Naturalist Universe.
Thus, the totality of information about the universe, accumulated by science at this point in time, it is advisable to designate the term "universe of the naturalist" in contrast to the philosophical concept of "material world", which includes in a hidden form all the future achievements in the doctrine of the "naturalist".
The "universe of the naturalist" is the result of a complex subject-object interaction. It reflects the real properties of matter, but to ask questions about what these properties are outside the cognitive process carried out by humanity is pointless.
"The dispute about the validity or invalidity of thinking, which is isolated from practice, is a purely scholastic question," emphasized K. Marx. The only way to see reality is to see it through the prism of practice.
Thus, humanity in the course of its practical activity realizes its "Universe of the naturalist", distinguishing from the infinite diversity of matter those of its properties and laws that are most important for practice, for the very existence of human society, for its further development.
The theory of the expanding universe. The main task of one of the most important sections of modern astrophysics, cosmology, is to study the structure of the universe on a large scale and the patterns of its evolution over time.
In 1922, the Soviet mathematician O. O. Friedman, analyzing the equations of the general theory of relativity of A. Einstein, describing the behavior of the universe, came to the unexpected conclusion that the universe can not be stationary: it must either expand, or contract, or pulse.
Subsequently, Friedman's conclusions were confirmed in astronomical observations, which revealed in the spectra of galaxies a redshift of the spectral lines, which corresponds to the mutual distance of these stellar systems.
As all clusters of galaxies move away from us, it seems that our Galaxy is at the center of expansion, at the fixed center point of the expanding Universe. This circumstance was used by some defenders of religion who sought to reassert our exclusive position in the universe through its help.
In fact, we are dealing with another astronomical illusion. The expansion of the universe occurs in such a way that it does not have a "predominant" fixed point. Whatever two clusters of galaxies we choose, the distance between them will increase over time. This means that no matter what the galaxy is, the observer will see the same pattern of starburst running that we see.
Therefore, we live in a non-stationary, expanding universe that changes with time and whose past is not identical to its present state and the present to the future.