And why ours may be the best of all possible worlds.
Why does the world exist? In other words, why is there something rather than nothing? This ultimate mystery in philosophy and physics has been called the “Fundamental Question of Metaphysics”.
First, it might that the question itself is flawed. “Nothing” is a human abstraction used to describe the absence of specific entities. The concept cannot be extended to all reality. If there truly was “nothing”, then nothing could ever exist, which contradicts the brute fact that we are here to pose the question.
Already in the fifth century BCE, the pre-Socratic Parmenides of Elea argued that one cannot speak or think of “nothing”. To think of anything at all, it must in some sense exist or pre-exist. Logically, something cannot come out of nothing, or nothing out of something. If there is something, there cannot have been nothing, and vice versa.
Quantum Physics and the Multiverse
When we try to imagine nothingness, we find that we cannot. In our mind’s eye, there is still, for example, light and space. “Nothing” could be a non-descript state, lacking the laws and properties enabling it to maintain itself. Thus, “nothing” would be an unstable state, and bound to collapse into “something.” Existence, perhaps, is more stable than non-existence.
Many physicists tell us that an absolute vacuum is likely impossible. Quantum fields constantly fluctuate, creating energy and particles out of what we perceive as empty space. What we perceive as empty space is really a bubbling “foam” in which virtual particles and fields constantly flicker in and out of existence. Some theories go so far as to suggest a multiverse in which every possible world naturally exists, making our universe just one of many. It so happens that our universe is one that is full of interesting things, like moons, roses, starfish, and talking monkeys like me.
Still, a quantum field is something. Quantum physics merely explains how to get “something from something,” rather than “something from absolute nothing.” Also, quantum physics presupposes the laws of quantum physics, without being able to account for their origin.
Leibniz’s Cosmological Argument
Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) built his entire metaphysical system of monads on just two fundamental principles of reasoning, namely, the principle of non-contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason.
- The principle of non-contradiction states that a proposition and its negation cannot simultaneously be true; therefore, if the one is true, the other must be false, and vice versa.
- The principle of sufficient reason states that everything must have a reason or cause, even when those reasons cannot be known to us. There are no brute facts.
Leibniz thought that the ontological argument for the existence of God, according to which the very concept of God as a supremely perfect being entails his existence, is incomplete, since it proves only that the perfect being exists if he is possible.
In 1697, he wrote a short treatise, On the Ultimate Origin of Things, in which he supplements the ontological argument with a “cosmological argument” founded on the principle of sufficient reason, according to which the cause of the cosmos, which consists in a contingent series of dependent causes, can only be a first, necessary, or uncaused cause.
The Best of All Possible Worlds
That there is a God or first cause does not explain why he created the world. Thus, in On the Ultimate Origin of Things, Leibniz also asks why there is something rather than nothing, and replies, rather poetically: because good and beautiful things demand to exist.
…since something rather than nothing exists, there is a certain urge for existence or (so to speak) a straining toward existence in possible things or in possibility or essence itself; in a word, essence in and of itself strives for existence. Furthermore, it follows from this that all possibles, that is, everything that expresses essence or possible reality, strive with equal right for existence in proportion to the amount of essence or reality or the degree of perfection they contain, for perfection is nothing but the amount of essence. From this it is obvious that of the infinite combinations of possibilities and possible series, the one that exists is the one through which the most essence or possibility is brought into existence…
Leibniz used this line of thought to bolster his argument that ours is the best of all possible worlds, with moons, roses, starfish, and talking monkeys like you.
Neel Burton is the author of the newly published The German Greeks: German Philosophy and the German Philosophers.