Why is there anything rather than nothing?
Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1686) defines philosophy as “arguing from phenomena to investigate the forces of nature.” Newton’s discovery of universal gravitation demonstrated that things that seemed to have nothing to do with one another – falling objects and the motion of the planets – were forms of one principle. Magnetism and electricity were later understood to be forms of one thing – electromagnetic waves – light was recognized to be an undulation of EM fields – space and time were seen to be aspects of the same continuum – spacetime – gravity was discovered to be a kind of curvature or bending of spacetime. The understanding that gravity is curved spacetime explained the discovery that the universe is expanding – it is racing outwards away from us in every direction at fantastic speeds – it is not expanding into anything but instead is creating distance / duration between every two points in spacetime. The ultimate constituents of the universe seemed to be waves and particles – later all these constituents were seen as particles, sometimes following the laws of classical mechanics and sometimes new laws of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics leads to the idea that all phenomena of whatever type are interactions of the same kind. Quantum field theory unifies all known phenomena (gravity, electromagnetism, weak force, strong force) and leads to Dirac’s prediction of antiparticles (1928) – this explains the discovery of the positron (1932) – which unifies the micro and macroscopic scale – a universe extending outwards from the earth in all directions 1026 meters, and resolving to the Planck scale at 10-33 meters – thus Newton’s principles and their consequences unify many observations – but at fantastic cost: for they also virtually unify existence with empty space – being with nothingness.
The discovery of antimatter demonstrates that the vacuum – the place where everything is taken out – i.e. the void, nothingness, nonbeing – complete and utter emptiness – does not exist. This discovery seems to spoil the meaning of ‘nothing’ as that less than which we cannot conceive, but also conforms to the basic goal of saying what is so.
The ‘vacuum’ is swirling with a sea of particles and antiparticles eternally – the cosmos is ultimately a kind of fluid that looks the same to all observers – the ‘condensate’ – in interaction with which particles begin to form and have mass. Spacetime emerges out of something that at higher levels of energy and smaller regions of space no longer has the properties of a ‘location’ or a ‘time’ – thus we talk about spacetime breaking down at the event horizon of the singularity – a kind of origin-place where the quantities used to measure the gravitational field become infinite – this is what people are referring to in the idea of the ‘Big Bang.’
Einstein held a theory that people today call “local realism” on the ‘realistic’ assumption that all objects must objectively have a pre-existing value for any possible measurement before the measurement is made. This theory was tested and disproven in 1981. This suggests that the proposition he was contesting – what he called “spooky action at a distance” – is closer to what we can actually observe. Quantum entanglement, as it is now called, is a physical phenomenon that occurs when groups of particles are generated in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently, and yet a quantum state may be given for the system as a whole.
In effect the “Big Bang” is a kind of “spooky action at a distance” in which objects do not objectively have any pre-existing value before a certain event occurs.
Being (the physical universe), according to this schema, emerges unaided from quantum mechanical waves in Nothingness (the condensate).
Why is there anything rather than nothing?
It would appear that being and nothingness are powerful principles of explanation which when merged too closely undermine the explanatory force of the model. Parmenides, a father of philosophy, urges keeping them separate in Way of Truth. Plato ignores this when he says that “a false proposition asserts the non-existence of things that are and the existence of things that are not.” This suggests that a proposition like ‘X does not exist’ must either be false or meaningless; either X exists, in which case the original proposition is false, or X does not exist, in which case X has no meaning. This ancient problem – “Plato's Beard” – What is not must in some sense be or otherwise what is there that there is not? – is ‘solved’ by thinkers such as William of Ockham, by keeping principles to a minimum – Frege, Russell, Quine, Davidson all show that a name can be a description, or means of recognition, so that sentences involving names can have meaning even if they have no truth-value – Bradley’s thesis is that if there were no way re-identify the referent of a name, then there would be no way to use the name in the first place.
Thus the sort of “nonbeing” that Parmenides warns us about is very familiar – thoughtspace as we inhabit it includes endless false claims, innumerable references to imaginary beings, unlikely stories and flat contradictions. Nothingness and Nonbeing and the Not and Emptiness and many other such places are all profoundly human and completely ordinary.
Thus we know just as far as we can measure – things before us become analogies – particulars become symbols which foster translation to larger contexts. When we ‘know’ something, we have already left the immediate context – ‘understanding’ wrests us out of the here and now – we have already left the world of being and crossed over into nothingness.
Why is there anything rather than nothing?
The question ‘Why is there anything rather than nothing?’ somehow encapsulates the whole of philosophy and all the longing of human beings over a stretch of time we can hardly imagine.
This childlike, venturing, but also skeptical, urgent question is a symbol for us, like the words anvikshiki, tetsugaku, tattuvam, whai whakairo – words from Sanskrit, Japanese, Tamil, and Maori – all of which translate as ‘philosophy’ -- of a deeply human search for meaning.
The teaching about wonder argues that there is a universal human characteristic at work and not just an accident of history. Any creature, endowed with a symbol-wielding intelligence, will ultimately practice philosophy.
Being and nothingness – all or nothing – formed into the question “why is there anything rather than nothing?” – implies by its asking a prior state of emptiness, so that nothingness is somehow a natural state and not in need of explanation, whereas Being is mysterious – the mysterium tremendum – which thus mystifies human beings and requires to be examined.
Therefore, nothingness plays an important conceptual role in contrast to Being, not only in reasoning about the physical universe and the ultimate constituents of matter – e.g. Homer calls Night “subduer of gods and men”; the Pythagoreans derived the universe from the primordial opposites of Hades and Zeus, Dark and Light – but also regarding human being.
The concept of nothingness, of being literally nothing, draws attention to the contrast not just between Is and Is not, but between being a thinking being, a conscious being, and being any other kind of being – the difference between agents and mere things. As Sartre says – a stone is what it is – it has this character. A human being sometimes sinks into passivity in order to evade the core problem of living; but the person who attempts to evade responsibility is responsible for undertaking this course. A stone does not make any decisions, yet a stonelike person has decided to be a stone.
A human being is nothing – not merely a thing – but instead a state, a condition, a process; and because a human being is nothing – not any definite thing – he or she can change and become something; in truth a human being is nothing – not any fixed thing – but instead is always changing – and ultimately a human being dies; he or she becomes nothing.
Existentialist philosophy uses the term ‘nothingness’ in a special sense, to indicate that there is no pre-existing human nature, no fundamental human quality or truth; Sartre defines nothingness as follows: “It comes into the world by the For-itself as the recoil from the fullness of self-contained Being.” Sartre says human being is nothing, but is on-the-way. Heidegger defines human reality as “the placeholder for nothingness.”
The Buddha held that moral self-discipline grows out of the focus and equanimity practiced in insight meditation; wisdom derives from the calm of meditative practice, allowing one to stand aloof from passing experience and extinguish clinging. One way of expressing this change is to talk about moving from ignorance to knowledge – another way describes the gradual realization that reality is empty or “nothing.”
In his lecture The State of Nothing Alan Watts talks about this void. “If you are aware of a state called is, or reality, or life, this implies a state called isn’t. Or illusion, or unreality, or nothingness, or death. You can’t know one without the other. And so as to make life poignant, it’s always going to come to an end. That is: now you can see what makes it lively.”
