By René van Slooten
This year's Nobel Prize for physics was for research on the expanding universe. However, the theory of the 'Big Bang' and the expanding universe was invented in 1848 by Edgar
Allan Poe, who found inspiration in the Qur'an.
The theory of the 'Big Bang' and the expanding universe, is the modern, generally accepted scientific vision on the birth and development of the universe. This theory is usually attributed to the American astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) but that is not entirely correct, because the theoretical foundations for that theory were laid in 1922 and 1927 by the Russian mathematician Alexander Friedmann (1886-1925) and the Belgian astronomer
Georges Lemaître (1894-1966). So with his observations Edwin Hubble proved a theory that already existed for several years, but it was still a formidable achievement.
However, the past decades it has become clear that the 'Big Bang' theory is not a product of modern, 20th century science, but that it was already proposed in 1848 by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe, who was inspired by the Qur'an in his life-long quest for an alternative for the scientific opinions of his days.
Romanticism against Enlightenment and science
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American writer and poet who became one of the leading figures in the 19th century literary and cultural/spiritual movement of Romanticism.
Romanticism was a strong movement in the western world, that arose out of a deeply felt aversion and distrust against the philosophy of rational, scientific Enlightenment. Like all romanticist writers and poets, Poe felt that Enlightenment was alienating mankind from its spiritual roots and its bonds with nature, so Romanticism tried to compensate or even restore these serious shortcomings of the 'enlightened' and scientific view of the world.
Like most romanticists Poe also looked for inspiration outside the western world, and already at a young age he became fascinated and inspired by the cultures of the Middle East, the Arab world and the Qur'an; the 'Oriënt', in one word. This inspiration was already expressed in Poe's earliest works, like the poems 'Al Araaf' and 'Israfel', and in the title of his first short stories, the 'Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque'. This oriëntal inspiration in
Poe's work is now the subject of serious scholarly research.
The scientific opinions of Poe's days were entirely based on the basic idea of a mechanistic universe that was ruled by the eternal, unchanging and mathematical laws of nature, the socalled 'clockwork universe'. This basic idea had arisen out of the work by great scientists like
Kepler, Newton and Laplace, and it seemed an unassailable and indisputable foundation for all sciences of nature. So knowledge of these laws of nature made it possible to use and exploit nature for the benefit of all mankind; a philosophy of science that still stands very strong today, although the disadvantages are becoming ever more visible in the western world.
However, this scientific and mechanistic view of the world also has a very dark side: man himself is reduced to an insignificant cog in the universal machine, without free will, without any real influence on the events, not even on his own life, without responsibility and without

guilt. Even God becomes meaningless and insignificant in such an universe (as was actually said by Laplace to Emperor Napoleon!)
Needless to say that such considerations deeply worried the romanticists, and these worries are also clearly visible in much of Poe's work, like in 'The Pit and the Pendulum' where the narrator is chained inside a mathematical prison that slowly threatens to kill him and drive him insane. The pendulum and the mathematical prison in this horror story symbolise the clockwork universe, but there are at least six major stories by Poe in which death and spiritual destruction come forth from clocks!
Poe's quest, 'Eureka' and the Qur'an
All his life Poe struggled to find and create a better universe, where man can be free and take full responsibility for his own life and actions. However, this could not be done without completely overturning the existing scientific opinions of his time! Nevertheless, Poe did exactly that in his last major work, the cosmogony 'Eureka. An essay on the Material and
Spiritual Universe'. He considered it as his greatest and definite work, after which he had nothing more to write (which he didn't, and he died a year later) i .
The cosmogony in 'Eureka' is based on two basic assumptions:
- The whole universe was originally enclosed in an undivided, unified particle.
- By an act of God, this particle exploded into an expanding, finely divided nebulae, from which the entire universe slowly evolved due to the actions of the forces of nature that were created with it, especially the force of gravity.
Of course these two assumptions are the same as the present scientific opinion (except the involvement of God), but at Poe's time they were absolutely unheard of and totally out of order from a scientific point of view. However, it is also clear that near the end of his life Poe found inspiration in the Qur'an of his youth ii , where an identical process of creation is described in almost similar words in Sura 31:30 (the splitting of the original, unified particle).
Sura 41:11 (the original nebulae) and Sura 51:47 (the expansion of the universe) iii .
Besides these two basic assumptions, there are more similarities between the Qur'an and
'Eureka', like the existence of a 'multiple' universe (like in Sura 61:12) and the renewal of our universe in a cyclic process that repeats itself eternally ( Sura 21:104 and Sura 39:67) iv .
However, it is only during the last ten or twenty years that scholars and scientists are rediscovering 'Eureka' as a source of modern science v , and also the 'oriëntal' inspirations of
Poe are still little known, so a serious study and comparison of Qur'an and 'Eureka' still has to be started.
'Eureka' and modern science
After Poe's death in 1849, he and his work were severely criticised and attacked in the USA.
Especially 'Eureka' was seen as proof that Poe had gone mad towards the end of his life, and as a result it was forgotten for a long time.
But in Europe things went differently, because several French poets had discovered Poe as a brilliant poet and writer. The French poets Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) and Stéphane
Mallarmé (1842-1898) translated Poe's works into French and made him immensely popular on the European continent. In England the same was done by the remarkable John Ingram
(1842-1916), a London postal clerk, who did much to make Poe popular in England.
Also 'Eureka' was translated and published by Baudelaire in 1859, and it was admired for its visionary and spiritual power, although no-one could yet understand the scientific importance. However, Poe's revolutionary ideas were not only appreciated, but also feared

and detested by some. And as a result 'Eureka' was even officially forbidden in 1871 in czarist Russia, although Poe's other work had become enormously popular and admired there.
Nevertheless, it was also in Russia that ideas from 'Eureka' entered, and radically changed, science for the first time, due to the Russian mathematician Alexander Friedmann (1884-
1925) who was inspired by 'Eureka', when he proved in 1922 that the universe could not be static, but must be dynamic (either expanding or contracting) vi . Friedmann used Albert
Einstein's work as a starting point for his scientific revolution, much to the anger of Einstein who was convinced that the universe was static (as were all scientists at that time) vii . It took
Einstein years to overcome his objections against the ideas of Friedmann (and thus Poe), and admit that he had actually made a blunder.
A few years later, in 1927, the Belgian astronomer and priest Georges Lemaître (1894-1966), postulated his theory about the creation of the entire universe out of an exploding unified particle, the 'cosmic egg'. Since Lemaître was interested in literature and poetry, and Poe was immensely popular in Belgium, it is certain that also Lemaître was inspired by 'Eureka'.
Anyway, at that time Poe's revolutionary ideas were common knowledge in Europe, so it was only a matter of time for them to become adopted by visionary and spiritual scientists like Friedmann and Lemaître (who eventually became science adviser to the Popes Pius XII and John XXIII) viii .
But it must be recognized that the Qur'an is at the root of these developments, and that much of modern science would be unthinkable without it! i The website www.poe-eureka.com is devoted to Poe and 'Eureka'. It also contains the full text with many notes. Published editions in Britain are 'Eureka' with a foreword by the astronomer and BBC producer Sir
Patrick Moore (Hesperus Press Ltd; 2002; ISBN 1-84391-009-8) and the recommendable Penguin Classic 'The
Science Fiction Of Edgar Allan Poe', edited by Harold Beaver (ISBN 0-14-043106-3). ii For Poe's inspiration from the Orient, see for instance http://www.eapoe.org/papers/psblctrs/pl20061.htm iii The Qur'an says that the original unified particle was 'split in pieces', but apparently in such a way that it resulted in a 'smoke' or nebulae. Poe understood correctly that this must have been caused by an explosion, a phenomenon that was unknown when the Qur'an was revealed. It should be noted here that Poe served for several years in the US Army, where he was trained as an 'artificer' of explosives expert. iv The same idea of eternal return also has a central place in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).
It is plausible that Nietzsche got it from Poe (whose work he knew), but it may also have been from the Qur'an. v See for instance the site of the astronomer Alberto Cappi (University of Bologna, Italy): http://www.bo.astro.it/~cappi/poe.html vi It is known that Alexander Friedmann was a fan of Poe. For Poe's influence on him, see also http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/02/books/think-tank-what-did-poe-know-about-cosmology-nothing-buthe-was-right.html vii Albert Einstein also read 'Eureka', and in 1933 and 1940 he wrote four letters about it to the Poe biographers
Richard Gimbel and Arthur Quinn. These letters show how much Poe's work confused and angered him. For these letters and comments, see www.poe-eureka.com viii It is interesting to note that Friedmann and Lemaître served during the First World War, and, like Poe, both were experts in the field of ballistics and explosives. This may have helped them to grasp and understand Poe's vision!