The Notion of Nothingness—Part 2: Some Initial Responses

The ancients rarely asked the question Why is there something, rather than nothing?, because their view of the world was different. Most of them were theists—usually polytheists—so they simply assumed that the world as they knew it was created by the gods. Most ancient cultures also had their creation stories, which focused more on how the world came about, rather than why.

Many ancient people—being of prescientific cultures—simply accepted the creation, without worrying about what “nothing” was like. It is modern science that has come to understand that Nature prefers simplicity, and hence wonders why the simplest situation of all—nothing—is not the order of the day. Many ancient cultures—the Greeks and those in the Far East—viewed the world as eternal; even cyclical. There was no beginning, no “before”, no Big Bang. It has always been. Nothing never existed!

There generally are three types of responses to this question of why there is something: (1) optimists feel that there must be a reason why the universe exists, and feel certain that we'll someday discover it, (2) pessimists feel that there might be a reason and we might discover it, but why worry about it, and (3) rejectionists maintain that there can't be a reason, so the question is meaningless. Philosophers love this kind of quandary, and they fall into all three categories, so they find fertile ground for debate.

Some scholars are inclined to argue straightforwardly that the universe exists because existence is better than nothing. They say that existence is essentially goodness, while nothingness is insipid, even lifeless. So here we are—existing in a world that is fitting and pleasurable. End of argument!

Other scholars say that the universe exists due to blind chance, thus there may be no explanation for it. A similar assertion is that there most likely could be many ways for there to be something, but only one way for there to be nothing; so something is just more likely than nothing. Others fear that the universe popped into existence when the Big Bang occurred, is possibly tenuous, and could pop back into nothingness at any moment. Enjoy it while you can!

Taking yet another look at the Big Bang: some scholars describe nothing as what existed before the Big Bang. But what does “before” even mean, if time began at that moment? It could be argued that there was no “before.” Our current model of the beginning of the universe is an extrapolation from the present expanding universe, back to its opening explosion. Many of the properties of the cosmos are neatly explained by that model, yet the model is unable to describe the very instant of origin. Maybe someday we'll have a better model that will define that beginning instant and hence what “before” might therefore mean, if anything. But we’re currently stuck in our ignorance.

Next time: Probing the definition of nothing.