why is there

something

instead of

nothing?

Two Essays:

Tim Urban

Robert Kuhn

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Why is There Something Instead of Nothing?

By

Tim Urban

No, but seriously. Why is there something instead of

nothing?

Last night, as I was creeping around the internet at 2:43am

while the adults of the world slept, my eyes glanced by the

headline, “Why is there something instead of nothing?” on

the sidebar of a site I was on. I didn’t click the article. I

finally went to bed, planning to sleep eight hours, when at

7am I decide that actually, it was a better plan to wake up

and stare at the ceiling for three hours thinking about why

there was something. Instead of nothing.

I had heard the question before. It’s an old one that lots of

people have pondered. But until 7am today, it hadn’t fully hit

me how unbelievably boggling a question it was. It’s not a

question—it’s the question—and the more you think about it,

the less sense it makes.

First, my mind goes to “Wait—why is there anything at all?”

Why is there space and time and matter and energy at all?

Then, I think about the alternative. What if there were

just…nothing…at all…ever…anywhere? What if nothing

ever was in the first place? But what? No. That can’t—there

has to be something.

Nothing is truly a crazy concept. I’d keep thinking about a

false nothing—like a vast empty vacuum (which is

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something) or nothing here, but other universes elsewhere in

other dimensions (which is something), or nothing now, but

at some point, way before or after now, there being

something (which is something). Even in my question in the

paragraph above, I refer to “ever” and “anywhere”—two

words that themselves only exist in the world of something,

because time and space are something.

Trying to wrap my head around true, utter nothing, is what

kept my eyes extra wide as I stared at the ceiling between

7am and 10am this morning. But the

fact is, there isn’t nothing—there’s

something. We’re something. The

Earth is something. Space is

something. Time is something. The

observable universe and its 100 billion

galaxies are something. Which then

leads me to, Why? Why does all this

something exist? And where the hell

are we? If this universe is the only

thing there is, that’s kind of weird and

illogical—why would this big space

just exist by itself in an otherwise

nothing situation? More logical, to me, is the bubbling,

frothing multiverse situation—but okay, we still then have

the same problem. Why is this bubbling thing happening?

Where is it happening? In what context is it happening?

That’s our main issue—we have no context. It’s like being

zoomed in on a single letter and not knowing anything

else—is the letter part of a book? In a library somewhere? Is

Why is there space

and time and matter

and energy at all?

Then, I think about

the alternative.

What if there were

just…nothing…at

all…ever…anywhe

re? What if nothing

ever was in the first

place? But what?

No. That can’t—

there has to be

something.

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it part of a word that exists by itself? Is it a single letter all

alone? Is it part of some code we don’t understand? We have

no fucking idea, because all we can see is this one letter. We

have no idea about the context.

Religious people have a quick answer to “Why is there

something instead of nothing?” I’m not religious, but when

I’ve thought hard enough about it. I’ve realized that it’s as

plausible as anything else that life on Earth was created by

some other intelligent life, or that we’re part of a simulation,

or a bunch of other possibilities that would all entail us

having a creator. But in each possible case, the existence of

the creator still needs an explanation—why was there an

original creator instead of nothing—and to me, any religious

explanation inevitably hits the same wall.

I did a little reading this morning to

see how people who had thought

about this a lot more than I had felt

about the question. Not surprisingly,

no one has a clue. Certain scientists

believe that quantum mechanics

suggests that nothing is inherently

“unstable,” that it’s possible for little

bubbles of space-time (something) to

form spontaneously (out of nothing),

and that if a thing is not forbidden by

the laws of quantum physics, it is guaranteed to happen.

Therefore, say quantum physicists, the arising of

“something” was inevitable. I’ll file this whole paragraph in

the Whatever the Fuck That Means cabinet.

It’s like being zoomed in

on a single letter and not

knowing anything else—

is the letter part of a

book? In a library

somewhere? Is it part of

a word that exists by

itself? Is it a single letter

all alone? We have no

fucking idea, because all

we can see is this one

letter.

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Others, like Joel Achenbach, believe that there’s no such

thing as nothing in the first place. He explains:

Seems to me that “nothing,” for all its simplicity and

symmetry and lack of arbitrariness, is nonetheless an

entirely imaginary state, or condition, and we can say

with confidence that it has never existed. “Nothing” is

dreamed up in the world of something, in the brains of

philosophers etc. on a little blue planet orbiting an

ordinary yellow star in a certain spiral galaxy.

I don’t quite get Achenbach’s logic. Why does there have to

be a physical world at all? Why is a physical world an

automatic thing? But then…if there weren’t a physical

world—ever—then what, there’s just fucking nothing at all?

This is ruining me.

Someone help.

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Why Is There Something Instead of Nothing

By

Robert Lawrence Kuhn

When I was 12, the summer between seventh and eighth

grades, I came to a sudden realization, and the thought struck

such fright that I strove desperately to blot it out:

Why not Nothing? What if everything had forever

been Nothing? Not just emptiness. Not just blankness.

But not even the existence of emptiness. Not even the

meaning of blankness. And no forever.

Lump together everything that exists and might exist—

physical, mental, platonic, spiritual, God. Everything. Call it

all “Something.” Ok, now why is there “Something” rather

than “Nothing”? Why does anything at all exist? Why not

nothing?

I now attack the question directly, finally, by speaking with

some really smart people, primarily philosophers (also one

physicist) who have thought long and hard about this

seemingly impossible question. I begin with one of my

favorite philosophers, John Leslie, who has been much

consumed with thinking about “Nothing” and the nature of

ultimate explanations. I ask him whether my question is a

legitimate one.

Leslie: It’s legitimate because it can have answers. Even if

one thinks the answer is “there just happens to be

something,” that’s still an answer.

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Is it the most fundamental of all questions?

Leslie: One could argue that all one’s views about the

nature of the universe will in the end depend on

whether the universe, which one believes exists,

could have a reason behind its existence. I myself

don’t like the theory that the universe just happens

to exist and just happens to have the characteristics

which it does.

At the end of all our strivings, after we have a final theory or

a series of final theories, and/or multiple universes with

perhaps different final theories in each, will we not still have

remaining this ultimate question: Why is there Something

rather than Nothing?

Leslie: I think that’s right. I don’t think it would be possible

to say, for example, that because quantum physics

tells us that it’s likely that a blank would at some

point fluctuate into a real world that that’s our final

answer. Because the question would then be, “Well,

why does this kind of quantum physics apply to

reality?”

I try to progress by trying to discern the nature of Nothing.

Nothing seems “simpler” than Something, I proffer, in that

Something has extra stuff to be explained, whereas nothing

does not. Leslie agrees, but amplifies the point.

Leslie: Even in a blank, there would be all sorts of facts.

Try to imagine out of existence all actual things. Is

that Nothing? In a sense, yes. But that overlooks the

fact that there’s an infinite richness of truths about

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possibilities which is bound to exist even though no

actual things exist.”

Leslie: So it’s impossible to have purely Nothing because

one always has possibilities. One always has facts

about relationships with possibilities. And one also

has the fact that certain possibilities are good and

other possibilities are bad. These are facts from

which one can never escape when think about what

exists—even if there were no actualities, no real

possibility of any actualities ever occurring, there

would still be no contradiction in the assertion that

actualities may possibly or potentially occur. Their

occurring would not be like the occurrence of, say,

a “married bachelor,” a logical contradiction.

For a philosopher to assert that anything is “impossible” is

an assertion of significance, and Leslie says that it is

impossible for there to be a Nothing without possibilities.

Leslie: One can even go further and say that the condition

of Nothing would have to be infinitely rich. There’s

an infinite number of possibilities and an infinite

number of facts about them. And those possibilities

and the facts about them will be there even if there

were no actual things forever and ever.

To Peter van Inwagen, a philosopher at the University of

Notre Dame, Nothing is important.

Inwagen: What would count as an answer to the Nothing

question? Well, we cannot describe a way that

nonexistent things could interact with each other

to produce existent things—the nonexistent is

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never going to produce the existent. Thus, this

question cannot be like questions about why

living things exist, when it gets answered there

answered by referring to the ways that nonliving

things may have interacted to produce living

things. Explaining why we have Something

would have to have a wholly different kind of

answer, if it had an answer at all.

Inwagen: One sort of answer to the question would be that

it was impossible for there to be Nothing, that

“there being Nothing” is actually an impossible

state of affairs. That, of course, would explain

why there was Something rather than Nothing,

since the impossible cannot occur. There have

been two attempts at this in the history of

philosophy. One is subsumed under the name

“ontological argument”—a greatest possible

Being must necessarily exist—and the other

under the name “cosmological argument,”

everything that exists must have a reason or an

explanation for its existence; whatever begins to

exist must have a cause. But I myself don’t find

either of these attempts convincing.

Another way of answering the question of why there is

Something rather than Nothing, Inwagen suggests, would be

to show that “it’s vastly improbable for there to be Nothing.”

Here’s his argument:

Inwagen: Think of all the possible ways that the reality or

existence might have been, right down to every

detail about the universe that could have been

different. There are infinitely many such possible

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ways. All these ways seem to be equally

probable—which means that the probability of

any one of these infinite possibilities actually

occurring seems to be zero, and yet one of them

happened.

Now, there’s only one way for there to be

Nothing, right? There are no variants in Nothing;

there being Nothing at all is one single state of

affairs. And it’s a total state of affairs; that is, it

settles everything. So there being Nothing that

exists was just one of the possibilities, just one

way for reality to be. And if the total number of

ways for reality to be are infinite, and if all such

infinite ways are equally probable such that the

probability of any one of them occurring is

essentially zero, then the probability of there

having been “Nothing instead of something” is

also essentially zero.

If one adopts this argument, Inwagen demonstrates, it’s like

answering the “why is there something instead of nothing?”

question by arguing “the reason there is something instead of

nothing is because it would have been very improbable for

there to have been nothing instead of something (if it were

even possible at all). Because there are an infinite number of

potential worlds—potential ways in which reality could

exist—each specific world would have a (essentially) zero

probability of existing, and because “there being nothing in

existence” is just one more of these potential worlds, the

probably of Nothing existing is (essentially) zero. A clever

argument. But doesn’t it assume that the prior probability of

“Nothing existing instead of something” is precisely the

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same as that of every one of the infinite number of possible

ways the world might have been? Inwagen’s argument turns

on the assumption that a “Nothing Total World” is equally

probable to every kind of an infinite number of “Something

Total Worlds.”

But, to me, Nothing seems different. “There being nothing

which exists” seems a much simpler type of reality, in that

all the other kinds of possible realities, in which something

exists, would require additional explanations in order to

explain those somethings.

Of course, some people answer this question glibly and say

“God.” “there is Something instead of nothing because God

created it.”

Inwagen: Either God is a necessary being—which would

mean that God’s non-existence is impossible—or

he’s not a necessary being, If God is a necessary

being then “there being Nothing” would be

impossible.

This, in essence, is the ontological argument for God’s

existence, which almost every philosopher rejects as

deficient and spurious, though determining precisely why

has proved to be maddening.

Inwagen: If God is a contingent being (not a necessary

being) then we still have the question of, “Why

is there Something rather than Nothing” because

one of the possible ways for reality to be is:

“there is Nothing, not even God.” The doctrine

of divine creation would then be “God exists and

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if anything else exists, that anything else must be

because God created it.” This may explain why

there’s a physical world, but not why there is

Something rather than Nothing.

At the end of all disputations, Inwagen himself says, “I know

what I think is the right answer: I think God exists and that

God is a necessary being, and therefore it’s not possible for

there to be Nothing.”

As for God being the answer, I put the question to University

of Oxford atheistic philosopher Bede Rundle, whose book

Why There is Something Rather than Nothing rejects the God

hypothesis.

Rundle: The question is fascinating in that it seems

impossible at first blush to give any sort of

answer at all. It’s had a longish history, starting

with Gottfried Leibniz; many philosophers have

tried their hand at giving an answer. St. Thomas

Aquinas worked out his answer, arguing “There is

God and God has to exist. He exists necessarily.”

Rundle: Now what I’m interested in is whether or not that

makes sense and can be substantiated. Those who

think that “there being Nothing” is not a genuine

alternative because there has to be Something

because there has to be God” are on the right

track—except for the God part. I’m trying to agree

with their general petition that there has to be

Something or other but the theistic solution seems

to me to have its difficulties.

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Rundle: So what are other conditions in which you can

speak of Something as beginning to exist? Isn’t it

the case that there has to be a time when it (the

Something) doesn’t exist followed by a time when

it does exist? But if you don’t have anything at

all, then you don’t have “enough time”; so it

doesn’t make sense to think of a state of affairs of

Nothing being followed by a state of affairs of

Something.

Rundle: Perhaps we just have to confront it—the fact of

Something existing—as brute fact, that there just

is Something. One can’t get beyond that, and

there’s no explaining it, and that’s that.

To me, to accept “brute fact” as the final explanation of

Everything—All-There-Is—is maximally unsatisfying, which

doesn’t make a brute fact hypothesis wrong, of course, just

maximally unsatisfying. Is this just a defect of human

cognition? Certainly evolution would have no reason to

select for capacity to understand this question. Rundle

answers me thus:

Rundle: If it’s a conceptual truth that there is Something,

and if there has to be Something, then that’s an

end to your agonizing, surely. And if you could

refute all the arguments that say, “We can make

sense of the state of affairs which is Nothing at

all,” then there is no alternative. There’s no such

thing or possibility as there being Nothing.

So Rundle believes that there must be Something or other.

There cannot be Nothing. Nothing is an impossible state of

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affairs. Is this progress? Or word games? I can’t decide.

“Nothing” still haunts me. “God” would close off debate.

What are alternatives? Quentin Smith, an atheistic

philosopher who is fixated on the riddle of existence, has his

answer.

Smith: The first thing is to recognize that when people have

tried to answer this question they have defined

Nothing as this very thin sort of Something, like

empty space, quantum vacuum, the null set, a point,

and the like—but few have really talked about

Nothing. A better way to define a real Nothing

is “Not Something,” so the question becomes:

“Why is it the case that it is false that there is not

Something?”

Smith: There is an answer to this, but it’s rather trite and

trivial, whereas we’ve associated this question as

having some great, grand, magnificent metaphysical

answer—but the answer is just logically trivial and

then really quite uninteresting.

Smith: The answer would be this: Right now, there being

Something is the state of affairs. The universe is

Something. So why does this Something exist?

Well, it was caused to exist by the previous state of

the universe, which was also Something, and that

previous state was also caused by a state previous

to that, which again is also Something and the

infinite regress, the endless series of causes

backward, can continue without end. And so the

reason why there is Something is that each

Something that exists has been caused by a prior

Something, and if you ask why there is Something

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at all, I say that I just confine myself to one

example: this state of the universe.

Smith: After I first realized this, it took me a while to

recover from the disappointment. I thought to

myself: “I spent all my life wondering why there is

Something rather than Nothing…and this is the

answer?”

Smith concludes that to call existence a “brute fact” is a

more logically complete explanation than either theism or

any other theory because there are no questions left

unanswered in the “brute fact” explanation. So Smith

contends that while “No Thing existing” might have been the

case, “Some Thing existing” is the case. And the reason is

trivial: Each and every thing was caused by a prior thing.

That can’t be the answer, but might it be? I still want to

scream, “Why Not Nothing?” Every time I return to it, the

question drives me crazy. To conclude, I consider God. And

then no God. In each case, I address the question, “Why Not

Nothing?” In each case, I ask one of the world’s most

profound thinkers.

I put the question to Richard Swinburne. He is one of the

foremost Christian philosophers currently living. I describe

my intuition: “I am astonished that there is Something,

anything at all, because Nothing would seem to have been

the most likely, perhaps most logical, state of affairs.”

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“I share that intuition,” Swinburne responds, “It is extremely

puzzling.” Swinburne’s approach to the question is to first

discern the essence of “explanation.”

Swinburne: All explanation,” he says, “consists in trying to

find something simple and ultimate on which

everything else depends. And I think that by

rational inference what we can get to that’s

simple and ultimate is God. But it’s not

logically necessary that there should be a God.

The supposition “there is no God” contains no

contradiction.”

I ask the traditional skeptical follow-up question: “OK, so

why is there a God?” Swinburne is clear.

Swinburne: There is no explanation of why there is a God.

In fact, it would be theologically problematic

if there were such an explanation of any kind.

If one were to say, “well, as a matter of fact,

it is logically necessary that there is a God,”

well then that would be a theological problem

because that would mean that the existence of

God would depended on some principle of

logic which was somehow superior to God.

Swinburne: If God is defined as “explaining everything

else” then God wouldn’t be God if there were

an explanation of his existence. God to be God

is “the ultimate truth.” That’s just how it is.

We can’t go further than that.

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To Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate in physics, the question,

“Why is there Something rather than Nothing” is “just the

kind of question that we will be stuck with when we have a

final theory of physics.

Weinberg: We will be left facing the irreducible mystery

because whatever our theory is, no matter how

mathematically consistent and logically

consistent the theory is, there will always be the

alternative that, well, perhaps there could have

been nothing at all.

Weinberg: In modern physics, the idea of empty space

without anything at all, without fields, is

inconsistent with the principles of quantum

mechanics. This is because the Heisenberg

uncertainty principle doesn’t allow a condition

of empty space where fields are zero and

unchanging.

But why, then, do we have quantum mechanics in the first

place, with its fields and probabilities and ways of making

things happen?

Weinberg: Exactly! Quantum mechanics doesn’t answer

the question, “Why do we live in a world

governed by these laws? And we will never

have an answer to that.

“Does that bother you?” I ask him. “Yes,” Weinberg says

wistfully. “I would like to have an answer to everything, but

I’ve gotten used to the fact that I won’t.”

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Here’s how I see it: The primary questions people pose—

Why the universe? Does God exist?—are important, sure,

but they are not bedrock fundamental. “Why anything at

all?” is the ultimate question.

I’ve come to only two kinds of answers. The first is that

there is no answer. Existence is a brute fact without

explanation. Something or Other has to exist. I don’t like

this, but I must accept that it may be so. The second is that at

the primordial beginning—whatever that may mean—

Something was self-existing. The essence of this Something

was its existence, such that nonexistence to it would be as

inherently impossible as physical immortality to us is

factually impossible. So, what are the candidates for

essential self-existence? They include:

Matter-energy and space-time.

Natural laws of physics or higher-order laws that

generate quantum mechanics and perhaps multiple

universes.

Forms of consciousness, cosmic or otherwise.

A creator God or an ultimate cause beyond the physical.

Or some overarching metaphysical principle or value,

like Plato’s “The Form of the Good,” which somehow

has causative powers.

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There are no doubt other candidates. And the argument that

our human brains/minds are incapable of answering this

question, or even properly addressing it, cannot be refuted.

Why is there Something rather than Nothing? If you don’t

get dizzy, you really don’t get it. Nothing is….closer to truth.

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OK, so why is there a God?” Swinburne is clear.

There is no explanation of why there is a God. In fact, it would be theologically

problematic if there were such an explanation of any kind. If one were to say,

“well, as a matter of fact, it is logically necessary that there is a God,” well

then that would be a theological problem because that would mean that the

existence of God would depended on some principle of logic which was

somehow superior to God.

If God is defined as “explaining everything else” then God wouldn’t be God if

there were an explanation of his existence. God to be God is “the ultimate

truth.” That’s just how it is. We can’t go further than that.”