"Science Will Never Explain Why There's Something Rather Than Nothing"
By John Horgan in Scientific American
If you want a more satisfying exploration of The Question, check out Why Does the World Exist? by the science and philosophy writer Jim Holt, to be published this summer by W.W. Norton. Holt is neither foolish nor arrogant enough to claim that he or anyone else has answered The Question. Rather, he ponders and talks about The Question not only with physicists, notably Linde, Steven Weinberg and David Deutsch, but also with philosophers, theologians and other non-scientists. And why not? When it comes to The Question, everyone and no one is an expert, because The Question is different in kind than any other question posed by science. Ludwig Wittgenstein was trying to make this point when he wrote, in typically cryptic fashion, "Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is."
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...
In my favorite section of Holt's book, he chats with novelist John Updike, whose work explored our yearning for spiritual as well as sexual fulfillment. Updike prided himself on keeping abreast of the latest scientific ideas, and one of his novels, Roger's Version (Random House, 1986), features characters who debate whether science can displace religion as a source of ultimate answers. Updike told Holt that he doubted whether science would ever produce a satisfying answer to The Question. Science, Updike said, "aspires, like theology used to, to explain absolutely everything. But how can you cross this enormous gulf between nothing and something?"
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.