"Why is there anything at all?" (or "why is there something rather than nothing?") is a question about the reason for basic

existence Existence is the ability of an entity to interact with reality. In philosophy, it refers to the ontological property of being. Etymology The term ''existence'' comes from Old French ''existence'', from Medieval Latin ''existentia/exsistentia' ...

which has been raised or commented on by a range of philosophers and physicists, including

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of math ...

Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is con ...

, and

Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th ce ...

, the last of whom called it "the fundamental question of

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

". The question is posed totally and comprehensively rather than concerning reasoning for the existence of anything specific, such as the universe or multiverse, the Big Bang,

God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...

mathematical Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

and

physical law Scientific laws or laws of science are statements, based on repeated experiments or observations, that describe or predict a range of natural phenomena. The term ''law'' has diverse usage in many cases (approximate, accurate, broad, or narrow) ...

time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

. It can be seen as an open metaphysical question, rather than a search for an exact answer. Monad

On causation

The ancient Greek philosopher

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ph ...

argued that everything in the universe must have a cause, culminating in an ultimate uncaused cause. (See

Four causes The four causes or four explanations are, in Aristotelian thought, four fundamental types of answer to the question "why?", in analysis of change or movement in nature: the material, the formal, the efficient, and the final. Aristotle wrote th ...

)

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...

took a " brute fact" position when he said, "I should say that the universe is just there, and that's all." Philosopher

Brian Leftow Brian Leftow (born 1956) is an American philosopher specializing in philosophy of religion, medieval philosophy, and metaphysics. He is the William P. Alston Professor for the Philosophy of Religion at Rutgers University. Previously, he held the N ...

has argued that the question cannot have a

causal Causality (also referred to as causation, or cause and effect) is influence by which one event, process, state, or object (''a'' ''cause'') contributes to the production of another event, process, state, or object (an ''effect'') where the ca ...

explanation (as any cause must itself have a cause) or a contingent explanation (as the factors giving the contingency must pre-exist), and that if there is an answer it must be something that exists necessarily (i.e., something that just exists, rather than is caused). Philosopher William Free argues that the only two options which can explain existence is that things either always existed or spontaneously emerged. In either scenario, existence is a fact for which there isn't a cause.

Arguments that there may be no need for causation

David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment phil ...

argued that a cause may not be necessary in the case of the formation of the universe. Whilst we demand that everything have a cause because of our experience of the

necessity Necessary or necessity may refer to: * Need ** An action somebody may feel they must do ** An important task or essential thing to do at a particular time or by a particular moment * Necessary and sufficient condition, in logic, something that i ...

of causes, the formation of the universe is outside our experience and may be subject to different rules.

Criticism of the question

Philosopher

Stephen Law Stephen Law (born 1960) is an English philosopher. He is currently Director of the Certificate in Higher and Education and Director of Philosophy at The Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxford. Law was previously Reader in Ph ...

has said the question may not need answering, as it is attempting to answer a question that is outside a spatio-temporal setting, from within a spatio-temporal setting. He compares the question to asking "what is north of the

North Pole The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's rotation, Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distingu ...

?" Noted philosophical wit

Sidney Morgenbesser Sidney Morgenbesser (September 22, 1921 – August 1, 2004) was a Jewish American philosopher and professor at Columbia University. He wrote little but is remembered by many for his philosophical witticisms. Life and career Sidney Morgenbesser ...

answered the question with an

apothegm An adage (; Latin: adagium) is a memorable and usually philosophical aphorism that communicates an important truth derived from experience, custom, or both, and that many people consider true and credible because of its longeval tradition, i.e. ...

: "If there were nothing you'd still be complaining!", or "Even if there was nothing, you still wouldn't be satisfied!"

Mathematical necessity

wrote: Philosopher of physics

Dean Rickles Dean Rickles (born July 17, 1977) is Professor of History and Philosophy of Modern Physics at the University of Sydney and a Director of the Sydney Centre for Time. Life Dean Rickles was born in Hull, Yorkshire. He briefly trained as a concert p ...

has argued that numbers and mathematics (or their underlying laws) may necessarily exist. Physicist

Max Tegmark Max Erik Tegmark (born 5 May 1967) is a Swedish-American physicist, cosmologist and machine learning researcher. He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the president of the Future of Life Institute. He is also a scienti ...

wrote about the

mathematical universe hypothesis In physics and cosmology, the mathematical universe hypothesis (MUH), also known as the ultimate ensemble theory and struogony (from mathematical structure, Latin: struō), is a speculative "theory of everything" (TOE) proposed by cosmologist Max ...

, which states that all mathematical structures exist physically, and the physical universe is one of these structures. According to the hypothesis, the universe appears fine-tuned for intelligent life because of the anthropic principle, with most universes being devoid of life.

Physics

Physicists such as Stephen Hawking and

Lawrence Krauss Lawrence Maxwell Krauss (born May 27, 1954) is an American theoretical physicist and cosmologist who previously taught at Arizona State University, Yale University, and Case Western Reserve University. He founded ASU's Origins Project, now c ...

have offered explanations that rely on

quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistr ...

, saying that in a

quantum vacuum state In quantum field theory, the quantum vacuum state (also called the quantum vacuum or vacuum state) is the quantum state with the lowest possible energy. Generally, it contains no physical particles. The word zero-point field is sometimes used a ...

virtual particles A virtual particle is a theoretical transient particle that exhibits some of the characteristics of an ordinary particle, while having its existence limited by the uncertainty principle. The concept of virtual particles arises in the perturbat ...

and spacetime bubbles will spontaneously come into existence, which is mathematically proven by the Chinese physicists Dongshan He, Dongfeng Gao, and Qing-yu Cai. Nobel Laureate

Frank Wilczek Frank Anthony Wilczek (; born May 15, 1951) is an American theoretical physicist, mathematician and Nobel laureate. He is currently the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Founding Direc ...

is credited with the

aphorism An aphorism (from Greek ἀφορισμός: ''aphorismos'', denoting 'delimitation', 'distinction', and 'definition') is a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle. Aphorisms are often handed down by ...

that "nothing is unstable." However, physicist Sean Carroll argues that Wilczek's aphorism accounts merely for the existence of matter, but not the existence of

quantum state In quantum physics, a quantum state is a mathematical entity that provides a probability distribution for the outcomes of each possible measurement on a system. Knowledge of the quantum state together with the rules for the system's evolution i ...

s, space-time, or the universe as a whole. Carroll concludes, as did Bertrand Russell, that "any attempt to account for the existence of something rather than nothing must ultimately bottom out in a set of brute facts; the universe simply is, without ultimate cause or explanation."

God

attributed to

as being the necessary sufficient reason for everything that exists (see:

Cosmological argument A cosmological argument, in natural theology, is an argument which claims that the existence of God can be inferred from facts concerning causation, explanation, change, motion, contingency, dependency, or finitude with respect to the universe ...

). He wrote:

"Why is there something rather than nothing? The sufficient reason... is found in a substance which... is a necessary being bearing the reason for its existence within itself."

Philosopher Roy Sorensen writes in the '' Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' that to many philosophers the question is intrinsically impossible to answer, like squaring a circle, and even God does not sufficiently answer it:

Argument that "nothing" is impossible

The

pre-Socratic philosopher Pre-Socratic philosophy, also known as early Greek philosophy, is ancient Greek philosophy before Socrates. Pre-Socratic philosophers were mostly interested in cosmology, the beginning and the substance of the universe, but the inquiries of thes ...

Parmenides was one of the first Western thinkers to question the possibility of nothing. Many other thinkers, such as Bede Rundle, have questioned whether

nothing Nothing, the complete absence of anything, has been a matter of philosophical debate since at least the 5th century BC. Early Greek philosophers argued that it was impossible for ''nothing'' to exist. The atomists allowed ''nothing'' but only i ...

is an ontological possibility. It can be argued that nothingness is an impossibility as there is already an existence.

Non-existence

The contemporary philosopher Roy Sorensen has argued that curiosity is possible "even when the proposition is known to be a

necessary truth Logical truth is one of the most fundamental concepts in logic. Broadly speaking, a logical truth is a statement which is true regardless of the truth or falsity of its constituent propositions. In other words, a logical truth is a statement whic ...

." For instance, a "''

reductio ad absurdum In logic, (Latin for "reduction to absurdity"), also known as (Latin for "argument to absurdity") or ''apagogical arguments'', is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absu ...

'' proof that 1 − 1/3 + 1/5 − 1/7 + … converges to π/4" demonstrates that not converging to π/4 is impossible. However, it provides no insight into ''why'' not converging to π/4 is impossible. Similarly, it's legitimate to ask why non-existence or "nothingness" is impossible, even if that is the case.

''Philosophical Explanations''

Robert Nozick outlined in the second chapter of his '' Philosophical Explanations'' the following possible answers to the question: # ''Self-Subsumption'': "a law that applies to itself, and hence explains its own truth." # ''The Nothingness Force'': "the nothingness force acts on itself, it sucks nothingness into nothingness and produces something." # '' The Principle of Indifference'': establishes that nothing is a possibility among the possibilities of having something. Then "the probability that there is something is n/(n +1) if n is finite and 1 if n is infinite." # ''Fecundity'': "Every possibility—including the possibility that there is nothing—exists in its own independent noninteracting realm."

References

External links

Why Anything at All?
''

Closer to Truth ''Closer to Truth'' is a television series on public television originally created, produced and hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn. The original series aired in 2000 for two seasons, followed by a second series aired in 2003 for a single season. Th ...

''
Why is there something rather than nothing?
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