Something Instead of Nothing

bbc.co.uk/earth/story/201411 … ist-at-all - an interesting read, but not really a damning hypothesis for agreement.

“Science Will Never Explain Why There’s Something Rather Than Nothing”
By John Horgan in Scientific American

Isn’t this the basic problem here in a nutshell? No matter who or what you start with in attempts to encompass somethingness – God, space/time, quantum mechanics – you’re stuck with explaining where that came from. But if you sweep a beginning under the rug, you’re left with explaining how something can just always exist. In the other words, the only thing in the entire universe that did not come into existence out of either nothing at all or out of something that we cannot actually put into words.

Of course that means that all attempts to “smack down” the speculations of others are no less on shaky ground.

Period? Case closed? End of story? Okay, but of theirs or yours?

Horgan is unnecessarily pissy, it seems to me, but I felt like Albert kept thinking he had explained precisely what Horgan is saying he did not. There were possibilities in the nothing that lead necessarily to something. Well, possibilities are not nothing. He kept trying to get more and more abstract and vague, but there was always some kind of rules, laws, tendencies, possibilities present. I wouldn’t say the issue cannot be solved, but in a popular science book - that is, intended for people who are not physicists, he failed with a number of fairly intelligent readers I know. And I see no consensus in the astrophysics community either that we solved that one.

There’s a human urge to shelve files as quickly as possible under solved. Police are notoriously in a hurry with such things as many a black man can tell you.

Well, whenever we are less and less able to demonstrate empirically, physically, phenomenally etc., what we think is true about “somethingness” in our head, the more our only recourse is a world of words. A world of intellectual assumptions about the relationship between the something that is existence and the something that is “I” speculating about it.

And living in it.

Abstraction is less the concern here for some than with those who actually imagine that their own abstractions need be as far as we go.

And my own emphasis here is always on the existential relationship between “I” and “all there is”.

And, as well, on the manner in which claiming to have “solve” something like this is rooted less in science and philosophy and more in human psychology. Being able to anchor “I” to one or another TOE.

But what that is rooted to is still…what exactly?

“Science Will Never Explain Why There’s Something Rather Than Nothing”
By John Horgan in Scientific American

Clearly, when it comes to The Question, who really knows where science ends and philosophy begins? We don’t even know if, as well, there is a demarcation here between them and theology.

What is is?

But at least the scientists go about the business of connecting their words to the world. They may propose some really wild speculations about mind-boggling relationships that most of us have no sophisticated understanding of, but they do go out into space and into our brains in order to attach these conjectures to actual “things”.

They then collect and accumulate data about interactions able to be demonstrated to others. Interactions in which experiments can be conducted, predictions can be made, results can replicated.

Whereas here arguments alone are often construed to be demonstration enough. In other words, words defining and defending only other words.

Arguments that aim more to satisfy some that the explanation itself is the whole point of the pursuit. To think that you know is the equivalent of mission accomplished.

Then and only then can you anchor “I” to a far more reassuring sense of reality.

Basically, this part…

That elusive “spiritual” foundation. And this revolves more around the purpose of somethingness, the meaning of it.

After all, only in approaching it from this angle can “I” be anchored teleologically to final truths on this side of the grave and to immortality on the other side of it.

That “something” is said to exist barely scratches the surface here. Instead, “I” needs to be connected to a “happy ending” as well.

“Science Will Never Explain Why There’s Something Rather Than Nothing”
By John Horgan in Scientific American

If nothing else, this reminds us how, when push comes to shove, the meaning of God and the meaning of Existence are both intertwined in what has got to be nothing short of a mind-boggling explanation.

Some [like Rabbi Harold Kushner] have imagined God as all knowing but not all powerful. In order to explain why “bad things happen to good people”. So, sure, why not a God that is not omniscient. Why not a Creator unable to grasp why He himself exists?

How much more unimaginable is that than everything there is coming into existence out of nothing at all. Or everything there is having no beginning [and presumably no end] at all.

I think anyone with even an ounce of intelligence recognizes how ineffable “being” seems to be. It is just not something you can wrap your head around and really feel satisfied with your own explanation. Unless, in my view, you are an idiot.

Or, here, a Kid.

“Science Will Never Explain Why There’s Something Rather Than Nothing”
By John Horgan in Scientific American

What is it about the human brain that compels us to propose things like this?

He avers that science will never explain why there is something instead of nothing. Or why this particular something and not another.

In much the same way that others declare there either is or is not a God. That there either is or is not an objective morality. That we either are or are not wholly determined.

Still, the scientific method for exploring these things is not at all the same thing as a leap of faith to God.

My own speculation here is that while we do not have answers to these questions here and now, some of us are considerably closer to oblivion than others. We sense that while, sure, “down the road”, science may in fact explain things that are still profound mysteries to us now. But “I” won’t be around to marvel at them.

As with so much embedded in the “human condition”, it comes down to the actual existential relationship between any particular individual and “all there is”.

Both on this side of the grave and the other side of it.

That seems compatible with what he wrote. But perhaps you had moved on to mulling in general.

There is a rush to claim knowledge, to set things right on the shelf, even amongst those who apparantaly support the scientific method as the only route to knowledge, while making strong claims based on other methods, ones they tend to look down on in other groups.

I think that’s worth pointing out. He would have been more consistent if he himself had not weighed in on his speculation that it will not be soon, but his general point is one worth making.

There should never be a rush to claim knowledge. Instead one should learn to be patient and
accept that what they re seeking will come in its own time rather than when they want it to

I agree. I think there is a kind of pre-emptive habit in humans, and even in the scientific community. The urge to stave off any particular other authority. We got this. It’s pretty much wrapped up. We can close the door on epistemology or whatever.
IOW it is in the context where other groups have claimed or might claim authority, and they want to close that door.

I think it is good to have gaps in knowledge because of the intellectual curiosity it provokes
Once something is known then that curiosity no longer exists and has to be found elsewhere

I suppose, but it’s a bit like saying it’s good to not be omnipotent. I am not worried about not being omnipotent either, any time soon. I am pretty good at worrying, but the problems of being omnicient and omnipotent haven’t made it to my top ten list of worries yet.

The title of the article is, “Science Will Never Explain Why There’s Something Rather Than Nothing”

Who are you talking about?

I’m saying that. Science and religion are far, far removed with respect to the “methodology” they employ in grappling with questions like this. It’s just a question of exploring further the gap between those who have faith in God the Creator and those who insist that God did in fact create the universe in, what, six days?

Faith implies doubt but I doubt the truly fervent believers feel much of that.

Mulling what in general?

I agree. Even the scientific method still flounders when scientists go far enough out on the metaphysical limb. And examining why there is something instead of nothing is about as far out as one can go.

Here I tend to come back to two things:

  • “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”

  • “It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe.”

Knowledge about what though?

And to suppose that knowledge will come in its own time seems to suggest that the knowledge we seek is out there. We just need be patient.

And, sure, that may well be the case regarding something rather than nothing. Or regarding those things that either are or are not in fact true.

But some then argue that in regard to conflicting goods that knowledge is also out there biding its time before finally showing up.

Well, suppose that it’s not? Suppose knowledge [what we can know] here is never more than a subjective point of view?

If he said that science will never explain why there is something…etc. He didn’t do it in the citation. He says it will not happen soon.
[/quote]

Ah, sorry, missed the title and read the text, which doesn’t really fit the title, since he mentions soon and now.

Yes, my sentence was poorly worded, but i though still clear.
He didn’t say the scientific method was the same as a leap of faith. He said that saying we have it all figured out or will soon is like that.

Right, sure. But saying that we have it all nearly figured out or will soon, is not a conclusion based on scientific methodology.

Fervent believers regardless of paradigm or methodology tend not to.

Well, there you go. That’s where it can become reasonable to call some things scientists or science advocates say as a mirror image of religous claims.

[/quote]
Sure, that could be part of saying that those who say we know nearly everything are speculating wildly and mirror faith-based people.

To ask the question “why is there something rather than nothing?” is a valid question, because, conceivably, there could be nothing. If the universe, really, was meaningless (which it isn’t), then there would, actually, be nothing existing.

Activity implies intentionality, which entails meaning. Humans strive for various things, such as social power; animals strive to survive and reproduce; plants strive to grow and pass on their seed; even inorganic matter has a telos: gravitation — accumulation of more energy, amassing itself.

Striving for something is intending, or meaning something. Everything means to do one thing or another. The universe is teleological.

There is something rather nothing, because the universe has meaning.

Arggh… I have to repeat myself again because someone didn’t read the thread.

Nothing is defined as: isn’t

Isn’t by definition isn’t: it’s not there

The universe is the lack of isn’t.

That’s why existence exists.

To additionally explain this:

From a Buddhist perspective, there is something called “dependent arising”.

This basically means that something else has to exist in order for something to exist.

What both of the phrases mean in terms of time is that in every moment, existence is just beginning to exist through the lack of isn’t, and dependent arising.

That’s why the present is so important in Buddhism.

The present moment is all of creation.

There is an inherent parsimony in scientific models. It’s an attitude which hides within it (or doesn’t) the idea that if we don’t have a really good model for why something exists and we all can’t find it in the lab, then it doesn’t exist. Another take on this is Occam’s Razor, as science groupies use it: this idea that the simpler model or context is the more likely one. (that’s a basterdization of the OR, but it does get used that way). So we have this tendency towards little or nothing or less in expectation. Taken to its extreme it means that something, the existence of whatever that something is, including the universe, bears the onus. Like something it weirder than nothing. Parsimony as ontology.

In that context the ‘why is there something rather than nothing’ question is a reaction to our, often, being immersed in this parsimonius ontology of the scientismists. And it should bother them. And it does bother them.

Yes there is ‘dependent origination’ [inter-beingness] is Buddhism, but there is also the concept of ‘Sunyata’ aka ‘emptiness’ and that is ultimately extended to ‘nothingness’ [it is contentious]. But I do not agree with the opposing view taking into the account the principle of the Buddhist Tetralemma.