The failure to account for an origin of the universe is not so much a
failure of modern scientific method as a failure of the bed-rock
metaphysical ideas still employed by relativistic and non-relativistic
physics. The problem of origins can be tackled simply by dropping
certain assumptions about 'objects'.
Any attempt to represent the universe as 'all-encompassing' fails when
we try to describe the universe as an object. For such a view entails
a description of the universe taken from a perspective or framework
that is yet more encompassing. In order to avoid a regress where
frameworks are reduced to objects in increasingly encompassing
frameworks, we can settle the matter immediately:
The 'universe' is the name, not of an object, but of the means whereby
objects are distinguished. That is, the universe is not a countable
object, but a framework that supports objects. It supports objects by
supporting plurality. We cannot, then, try to find a 'first' cause for
the creation of the 'single object' we call the universe.
The traditional logic of framework and object cannot help us out here,
as there is no recognition of that distinction. For example, Newtonian
space is traditionally the framework for the objects we call
'positions'. A 'non-position', or unpositioned point, would on that
account be another way of describing the absence of the framework,
whereas a traditional logical treatment would retain the framework and
view Newtonian space as itself a position. Frameworks are not
countable, neither are the properties of the objects they support
conferred on the framework itself. That is, plurality is not a
property of a framework.
To conclude, we have no grounds for speaking of a created single, or
multiple, universe, unless we wish to slip into the regress of
considering frameworks as objects.
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