A simple but fundamental question.
The "something" means the whole Universe (known and unknown), it could be represented as the reality version of the set of all sets, which is itself debated. It includes all the Multiverses and such.
A better version of the whole Universe could be described with a Grothendieck universe.
The "nothing" means an absence of the whole Universe, not a particular void or emptiness in the whole Universe but a nonexistent whole Universe.
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We don't know.
There are some very valiant attempts to engage the question here, and many of them even explore concepts well worth exploring. But just because we live in such a complex, information-packed age doesn't mean we need to pretend we know things we don't. The oracle at Delphi said that Socrates was the wisest man in Athens simply because he realised that he knew nothing, and supposedly that one statement is responsible for the existence of Western philosophy in the first place. She had a pretty good point.
I've never heard a good reason offered for why there is a universe/multiverse instead of there not being one. I may one day hear such a reason, but I couldn't begin to imagine how it might proceed. Nor can I think of an ultimate reason why "me" began. This is contrast, of course, to the scientific observations and models I can build of how a big bang might have lead to stars, galaxies and planets, a human being might have evolved on one of them, how physics could give rise to consciousness, and so on. But as to why that entire business is busily, well, businessing--a complete mystery. Sometimes the most honest thing you can do is admit that. Is it really so hard to do?
Before anything else one should be aware of the instrument used to answer questions. That instrument is human language. While there is no guarantee that such a system of patterns is powerful and expressive enough to reason about the necessity of all that is, we can still examine what can we reasonably say and understand about this.
Let us begin by finding out the difference between Something and Nothing.
Obviously they are opposites - first word denotes the present state of affairs of all that is and the other one its negation. We can be fairly confident that right now Something is and Nothing is not.
So why is it this way? Could there be Nothing instead of Something? Turns out the answer is surprisingly simple and straightforward: if Nothing could be, then it would inevitably be Something - giving us a contradiction with our initial premises, thus demonstrating that Nothing cannot be.
In other words, there is Something because it cannot be otherwise - it is an inevitability that arises from the complete, utter and total incapacity of Nothing to exist as such.
A more formal version of the same argument can be found from @anon's answer.
Or to quote "The Way Of Truth" by Parmenides: For never shall this prevail, that things that are not are.
This is not circular reasoning. You are missing the point that we reason only through language which is a limited system of rules. Breaking a rule results in error.
The above question makes the error of assuming that non-being can be. It is self-contradictory. In the same way one can ask why is there no darkness in light or why is there no silence in sound.
Apparently you presume that if there is a word ("nothing"), then it must have an object, i.e. a correspondence with something beyond your own imagination. Not true!
Nothing is the opposite of Something, it does not and can not be.
Definition: We say X is logically impossible if it entails a contradiction, and logically possible otherwise.
Definition: Given a set of assumptions, a sufficient explanation for X is a demonstration that not-X is logically impossible within those assumptions.
Lemma: If not-X is logically possible within a set of assumptions, then there does not exist a sufficient explanation for X (via reductio ad absurdum).
Assumption: An absence of affairs is logically possible.
Conclusion: There is no sufficient explanation for why there is something rather than nothing.
This is ultimately a meaningless question in light of logical positivism. One cannot ask questions which have no translation to observations, and in this case, one cannot ask "what would it be like if there were nothing?" Nor can we ask "what is the relative probability of something rather than nothing?" other than in the trivial sense of 100% certainty of something, because here it is.
It is very easy to fool your brain into asking nonsense questions. These are question which cannot be translated into sense impressions, whose answers have no bearing on the observations. Examples of these questions:
Questions of this sort come up in physics all the time, and physicists have become exceptionally good at smelling when a question is nonsense:
These questions are completely ridiculous, physics doesn't answer them and doesn't admit that they need an answer. There are tons more, and you find as many as you like the more you delve into physics. This comes up right at the start, with the question "where is the coordinate zero in the Cartesian coordinates of the world located, really?" But these questions can fool the brain into thinking they are real questions, so physicists, starting with Ernst Mach, developed positivism to deal with them.
Positivism says, whenever you ask a question, ask yourself the following:
If the answer is no and yes respectively, then the question is meaningless.
The principle of positivism moots many questions, including that of "existence". If I have an cup, and it keeps all its attributes (visibility, water-holding, hardness,etc) but loses the property of "existence", how does it change? It obviously doesn't. So I can imagine that the cup is winking in and out of existence, and this does nothing to the empirical relations, so it does nothing at all to sense impression, and the question of existence is meaningless.
Carnap noted that the positivism has the effect of culling away many traditional philosophical questions:
These and many others, essentially all of classical philosophy, are mooted or answered by applying logical positivist principles. This is codified in Carnap's book on the nonsensical nature of metaphysics. In the 1950s this was considered revolutionary, but by the 1970s, philosopers missed the old questions, so they quietly killed positivism and buried Carnap.
The notion of positivism is alive and well in physics, past quantum mecanics at least, but going back much further. The positivism is the source of all the influential philosophy and most of the influential physics of the 20th century, and it really is impossible to go back.
Your question is meaningless in light of positivism, and has no answer, nor does it need an answer.
Douglas Adams said:
A guy said to me, 'yes, but the whole theory of evolution is based on a tautology: that which survives, survives' This is tautological, therefore it doesn't mean anything.
I thought about that for a while and it finally occurred to me that a tautology is something that if it means nothing, not only that no information has gone into it but that no consequence has come out of it.
So, we may have accidentally stumbled upon the ultimate answer; it's the only thing, the only force, arguably the most powerful of which we are aware, which requires no other input, no other support from any other place, is self evident, hence tautological, but nevertheless astonishingly powerful in its effects. It's hard to find anything that corresponds to that and I therefore put it at the beginning of one of my books. I reduced it to what I thought were the bare essentials, which are very similar to the ones you came up with earlier, which were:
- anything that happens, happens
- anything that in happening causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen
- anything that in happening causes itself to happen again, happens again
In fact you don't even need the second two because they flow from the first one, which is self-evident and there's nothing else you need to say; everything else flows from that.
So, I think we have in our grasp here a fundamental, ultimate truth, against which there is no gain-saying. It was spotted by the guy who said this is a tautology. Yes, it is, but it's a unique tautology in that it requires no information to go in but an infinite amount of information comes out of it. So I think that it is arguably therefore the prime cause of everything in the Universe. Big claim, but I feel I'm talking to a sympathetic audience.
To my mind what D.A. was getting at is that the origin-of-life question is the same as the origin-of-everything question: in both cases it seems counter-intuitive that stable systems can bootstrap themselves into existence. And that maybe these questions have the same answer: natural selection. Lee Smolin discussed his evolving universes idea with Richard Dawkins (who was a good friend of D.A.) here.
In both the origin-of-life and the origin-of-everything there were earlier proto forms that were very ropey and odd and inefficient and not what we think of as an actual universe/lifeform at all. Things like matter and indeed causality are highly-evolved end-products under this hypothesis.
colossal contentment with truisms merely because they were true Jul 20, 2011 at 17:37
I think a typical answer to that question is the Anthropic Principle: if there was nothing instead of something, then we wouldn't be here to ask the question. So, even if the odds of something to nothing is one in a trillion, we're always going to be in the universe with something rather than the one with nothing. (This still leaves open the question as to why the odds wouldn't be zero in a trillion, however.)
Additional answers to this question (none of which are particularly satisfying), include:
What do you mean by "why"?
Do you mean "how did 'things' come to be?". That is a scientific question, and can be attacked by gathering and interpreting data (like what the physicists do).
If you mean, "what is a justification (a proof) that there is something (and not nothing)?", then the justification is that if there were nothing, you wouldn't be able to formulate such a question.
I think such a question is more figuratively motivated, a searching for psychological satisfaction in the consciousness of one's own consciousness, the existence of one's own thoughts. The answer to that, of resolving that tension, is to just get used to it.
It seems to me that the term nothingness can't even be defined. So, how can you say something is not nothing if you don't even know what nothing is.
But, as soon as you define nothing as a subset of U or partition any part of U to make room for nothing, then you have thereby defined nothing and defined it as separate from U. You then know what nothing is.
Nothing is a word. That something exists can be verified by observation. Taking a word like existence (as in existence of everything), and then negating it, does not necessarily produce a meaningful concept. There is no meaning to the nonexistence of everything. In this case, it really makes no sense outside the context of our language's grammar and lexicon. It's just a word that refers to no observable facts (to NULL in a certain respect).
If you limit the context of the original concept of existence to a certain thing, or collection of things, then it becomes a statement of fact. That statement necessarily must have an inverse. If I state I wear a purple shirt, then either there is a purple shirt on my torso or there is not. So to say there does not exist that shirt is still a meaningful statement. One or the other statement is true, but not both. I cannot disentangle the word existence from meaningful facts without delving into absurdity. The moment you do that with any words, you end up with ridiculous statements that, though they may sound deep or illuminating, lack all meaning. They are just statements without any connection to the world outside of our own thoughts.
This sort of question reminds me of an article I read about Einstein's theories on light (sorry, can't re-find the source). Back in early 19s, there were serious debates on light in order to understand if it was matter of if it was waves.
Newton's experimentations show light has matter-like properties but Max Planck's show wave-like properties. Who's right ? ... no-one known until Einstein came up with the hypothesis of light being both wave and matter.
Perhaps this situation is similare and the answer is : there are both present. Maybe there is a duality of both somethingness and emptyness whithin the same univers (or multivers). Our current model of reality tells us there is somthingness, but since human have a tendency to develop model-dependent realities (Stephen Hawking - The Grand Design), probabilities of "being right" with our current model of somethingness are very low, almost impossible.
In Breif, my answer to "why there is somethingness instead of nothing?" is "because somethingness fits better with our current understanding of univers" ... It will fit until a new model of reality comes up and enlarge our understanding to introduce emptyness in it. Those new models of reality are normally brought by fundamental scientific discoveries.
My answer to the question of "Why is there something rather than nothing involves first providing a reason for why anything exists and then showing that what has traditionally been called "nothing" meets this reasoning and therefore really isn't "nothing" but actually exists.
In regard to the question of "Why do things exist?", I suggest that a thing exists if the contents of, or what is meant by, that thing are completely defined. A complete definition is equivalent to an edge or boundary defining what is contained within and giving "substance" and existence to the thing.
In regard to the question of "Why is there something rather than nothing?", "nothing", or "non-existence" is first defined to mean: no energy, matter, volume, space, time, thoughts, concepts, mathematical truths, etc.; and no minds to think about this lack-of-all. Next, I propose that this "non-existence" itself, and not our mind's conception of non-existence, in and of itself completely describes or defines the entirety of all that is present. Therefore, as a complete definition of what is present, what has traditionally been called "nothing", or "non-existence", is actually an existent state. That is, what has traditionally been called "nothing" is, when seen from a different perspective, an existent state or "something".
Another way to reach this same conclusion is by saying that in regard to the question of "Why is there something rather than nothing?", there are two choices for answering this question:
A. "Something" has always been here.
B. "Something" has not always been here.
Choice A is possible but does not explain anything. Therefore, choice B is the only choice with any explanatory power. With choice B, if "something" has not always been here, then "nothing" must have been here before it. "Nothing" is defined as above. But, in this complete "nothing, there would be no mechanism present to change this "nothingness" into the "something" that is here now. Because we can see that "something" is here now, the only possible choice then is that "nothing" and "something" are one and the same thing. This is logically required if we go with choice B.
Now, instead of saying "That can't be. Something and nothing are not the same", it's better to try and figure out how these two logically-required equivalent things can really be the same. The reason, I believe, is as described above that what has traditionally been called "nothing" completely describes, or defines, the entirety of what is present, and is therefore actually not "nothing", but is really an existent state.
Overall, I come to the conclusion that many others have come to which is that having true non-existence is not possible because even what we have traditionally thought of as true non-existence is really an existent state when seen from a different angle. Non-existence is basically a misnomer that has come about because we've been thinking of non-existence in our minds, which exist. Next to our existent minds, nothing just looks like nothing. But, nothing, or non-existence, itself, and not our mind's conception of non-existence, isn't dependent on being defined as the lack of existence. It's on its own and, on its own, completely describes the entirety of what is there and is thus really an existent state. In this (and all) areas, it's very important to distinguish between our mind's conception of non-existence and non-existence itself in which all minds along with everything else are gone.
This may all seem to be a waste of time, but the above reasoning provides a reason for why things exist and by trying to figure out the properties of the particular existent state previously referred to as non-existence allows one to build a model of the universe that is based on these properties via what I call "philosophical engineering". This model has symmetry breaking, a natural reason for why energy exists and a big bang like expansion of space.
A more thorough discussion of the above idea along with some responses to critiques is at my website at: https://sites.google.com/site/ralphthewebsite/filecabinet/why-things-exist-something-nothing
Also, some discussion of this has also taken place recently at google.com/groups in the epistemology and everything-list groups and many years ago at a digital philosophy group.
One additional interesting facet to consider, and apologies if I missed it in the earlier answers, comes from looking at the sum total of energy in the observable universe. As far as we've been able to measure so far, all the positive energy sources in the universe (positive electrical charges, mass, etc.) are exactly cancelled out by their equivalent negative energy source (negative electrical charges, gravity, etc.).
If the nature of the universe is such that the sum total of all energy actually IS exactly zero, we have the fascinating situation where the universe is, in a sense, 'nothing' - at least in the manner of:
1 - 1 + 2 - 2 + 3 - 3 = 0
Further support for this idea comes from physicists who are studying 'virtual particles'. It turns out that a pure vacuum is unstable, and 'virtual particles' can appear out of 'nothing' for a brief moment of time before re-combining and cancelling each other out again: a Nothing -> Something -> Nothing progression of the form: 0 = 1 - 1 = 0
In short, one of the unexpected answers to the ancient question is that, just maybe:
Σ(Universe) = 0
... Meaning once again, the universe appears to be turning our intuitions on their head: the 'something' that we see might actually be an expression of 'nothing'!
Because nothing is a state of void being. This is an unnatural and unstable state. If you release something into a void it attempts to quickly disperse filling the void as much as possible. Similarly upon creation objects try to disperse. In a strange coincodence or maybe design things also attract each other. So while nature wants voids filled, matter wants to be together. As a result you end up with collections of particles scattered through out the universe.
Space is not truely empty. There are an effectively infintite number of atoms and particles out there. They are mostly dispersed so as to have an effective pressure approaching 0 through out the majority of the universe. But there are particles there. When they get close enough together and have enough attraction they couple. Eventually that couple collects more or becomes part of a larger collection.
So there is something because that is a more stable state. There are theories that there is antimatter collections in the universe that would cancel out most matter but the dispersal of matter/antimatter sometimes happens before the 2 can cancel each other out.
-- Edit addressing some Ben Hockings concerns
I propose that you can not sum space time. Thus there can be no totality of spacetime. That it may be infinite and immeasurable. That we indeed exist because that is a more natural state. That the universe as you have defined it expands to fill a limitless nothing because that is a more natural state than containing nothing.
Limitless is not the same as being infinitely large. It is nothing thus it has no size, and is not defined by our space time. No displacement is neccessary as there is nothing to displace. The universe expands to fill something that has no volume, or capacity thus can not be filled.
In some ways we agree that the void does not exist as part of our space time. But I deny that our spacetime contains the totality of all that is. The scientist in me would love to limit everything to the limits that transcribe. That would imply that the potential is there to understand everything even if the reality of that approaches the impossible. But logically that makes no sense. I can accept that we exist as statistical anomaly. But if we exist as a statisical anomoly of a cycle of creation/annialation what is the chance that that anomaly only exists once?
I'll be mostly repeating other good answers, but I'll be using different words, semantics and concepts.
Because if there was nothing at all then, by definition, nothing could ever come out of it and we would never be able to be here, reasoning about it.
There, that's all.
We can go on and reason about the question in so many different ways. What I'll try to do below is bringing up some random reasoning to luckily connect a synapse in the OP's brain that makes sense. Because, in all truth, there is just nothing (instead of something) that can be said to answer the question as whole to everyone! :-)
For instance, back in 2005 I figured, for myself, the answer to "what's the reason of life, existence, and all things" to be there is no reason. To my neural network, that makes so much sense that the exact instant I came to this answer, with that exact wording, [I felt a formication in my brain (read the description, I've uploaded that video)][1] like never before or afterwards.
Back to the topic...
Let's define universe to everything that can possibly affect us somehow.
And let's define the nothing opposite to something as NOTHING, all in uppercase, in contrast to using semantics for talking about an empty group, the regular usage for nothing.
So, first, let's finally suppose you meant time (or space time) itself broader than the universe.
Then it doesn't matter if there is NOTHING at any point.
NOTHING could have existed outside the universe group, at some point. Though it may also be the case that NOTHING never existed. It certainlly haven't existed inside our universe because if it did it would have affected us and there would be nothing instead of something. Since it's outside our universe, it can't matter, by definition. Nothing that exists outside of the universe matters to us.
But then we have two different groups (which might be the premise of your question): the NOTHING and the something, which includes the universe defined above.
If we were at the NOTHING group, we couldn't possibly be reasoning about it, by definition. So we are in the something group. There is something right now. There might be nothing at a place and time out of our universe - it can't matter.
Now let's go to the other possibility and assume...
For whatever that means. Maybe the big bang created spacetime. Maybe there are things before the big bang which can affect us.
In any case, the universe includes some physical constraints that goes way and beyond anything we currently understand by reality.
Even then. If NOTHING was inside the universe group, it would be able to affect us. Again, what's a "NOTHING instead of something" which can affect us? It can only be, by definition something that would make it impossible anything to exist - or else there would be something.
Or worse the, NOTHING is inside the spacetime group. But wait, how can NOTHING even be inside any grouping?! If it exists anywhere alongside something it's alraedy not opposite to something!!
That's a whole different question. The answer is: we have no fucking clue.
Then again, think of it this way: if there ever was an absolute NOTHING, how could anything come to exist? Answer is: there couldn't. That alone is already reason enough for something to exist. Else, NOTHING would be eternal and, well, what's the point in THAT?! ;P
The more you can realize there could never, ever, be NOTHING.
Since the empty set is also a set and therefore you have the whole set theory and nearly everthing logic requires. {} is the null statement and the empty set. Therefore there is a set and there is something. Here are more empty sets {<>,<>,<>} in fact 3 sets and there exists 3 things actually 4 things since the set of 3 sets is also a set and so on.
Asking "why" there is "something" (i.e., existence) is conceptually invalid: To ask "why" such-and-such a state of reality exists is implicitly to ask for a more detailed causal account of how things act to bring about this state. So if a person asks, "why is fire hot?" they are implicitly asking for a more detailed causal account of the heat of fire. A reasonable response to this might explain that fire is the oxidisation of certain materials, and explain why this physical process produces heat; a deeper explanation might further explain heat and temperature in physics terms and give a more detailed account of what "heat" actually is. One could ask an initial question like this, and then keep asking "why" at each explanation, and in each case, the respondent would attempt to provide a deeper account of the causal process, by going into more detail on the causal physical processes at work. What is important here is that asking "why" is a question about causality, and the answer is always to give a more detailed causal explanation.
So, when you ask "why is there something instead of nothing?", you are asking for a deeper causal account of the creation of "something" (i.e., a causal account of the existence of existence). This means that you are asking for a causal account for how "something" came to exist from a previous state that was not itself "something". Which means: you are asking for a causal account of how "something" is created from "nothing". Which means: you implicitly presume that something could not have been the start of things to begin with, and it must have sprung out of nothing. By the very nature of "something" (i.e., existence) there is nothing else outside of it, and so there is no thing or time outside of it. There is no preliminary state from which "something" could be the causal result. Hence there can be no causal account of the existence of "something" and so there is no "why".
(Incidentally, your question relates to a funny little experience that parents of young children have when little children incessantly ask "why". Parents of young children will be familiar with the fact that there is a limit to one's explanatory capacity when the child keeps asking "but why?" at each step of an explanation. This limitation represents the fact that deeper accounts of causality have a limit, though in the case of explaining things to a child this is more of a pedagogical limit than a metaphysical limit. Nevertheless, you can see that eventually there must be a starting point.)
The OP miscasts this famous question as physicalist rather than phenomenological.
Proceeding with a few quotes from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy : Nothingness
Let’s begin with a question that Martin Heidegger famously characterized as the most fundamental issue of philosophy. : Why is there something rather than nothing? . . .
‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ is not about the origin of the world. Increasing the scientific respectability of the creation story (as with the Big Bang hypothesis) would still leave Heidegger objecting that the wrong question is being addressed.
Now switching to colourful quote from Camus, The Fall, (1956)
Please, let’s sit down. Well, what do you think of it? Isn’t it the most beautiful negative landscape? Just see on the left that pile of ashes they call a dune here, the gray dike on the right, the livid beach at our feet, and in front of us, the sea the color of a weak lye-solution with vast sky reflecting the colorless waters. A soggy hell, indeed! Everything horizontal, no relief; space is colorless, and life dead. Is it not universal obliteration, everlasting nothingness made visible? No human beings, above all, no human beings! You and I alone facing the planet at last deserted!
What makes everlasting nothingness visible is life, and what makes life is ('arguably') the self-organising principle and driving force of life: the Life Drive.
This concept of Life Drive is taking after Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principal, Nietzsche's Will to Power, Heidegger's essence of being (Beyng), and Derrida's Life Drive in The Postcard, To Speculate--on "Freud", which I previously mentioned here.
So, not a question and answer about the Big Bang, but a more obvious question and answer about the originating principle of the beings who turn nothing into something.
No matter how one will want to answer this question, one would have to appeal, at least implicitly, to that which exists (or to what supposedly exists). Otherwise, one would put himself in the dubious position of assuming that the appeal to non-existence somehow explains existence. (The trend in philosophy since Plato, and perhaps long before him, is to posit some form of consciousness as the “answer” to such questions, even though this tactic is irrescindably incoherent.)
Thus, by posing this question and assuming that it is valid, you implicitly (but unavoidably) commits yourself to the fallacy of the stolen concept. If we ask why something is, but simply turn around and posit that something in our explanation of that something, what mileage have we gained? Indeed, we’re back to where we started, yet we don’t admit it to ourselves. This is what you do in assuming that the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” (or “Why does existence exist?”) is a valid question. One will have to assume the fact of existence in order to answer the question. But in so doing, he will have to deny the fact of existence in order to validate his assumption that there must be a reason why there is something rather than nothing. He must assume the very concept his argument wants to deny, thus ‘stealing’ it from the objective hierarchy of knowledge, and rendering invalid any conclusion he hopes to draw from his argument.
Existence exists. We must start somewhere. The theist wants to start with a form of consciousness. He wants to posit a mind (albeit supernatural) which is responsible for creating all its objects. This is called metaphysical subjectivism, a view which holds that existence finds its source in a form of consciousness.
Some may object to my characterization of the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” as fallacious, contesting that there is no such thing as a fallacious question. However, it is true when we examine issues in epistemology and logic, that there is a such thing as an invalid question. The fallacy known as ‘complex question‘, for instance, is a species of invalid question. It is a question which operates on a false assumption and expects the reader to accept that false assumption in order to answer it. The typical example is the question “Have you stopped beating your wife?” The question assumes that one is a married man and that he beats or has beaten his wife; indeed, it implies such beatings are a regular occurrence. Contrary to these assumptions, however, it could be the case a) that he is not married, or b) that he is married but has never beaten his wife. Since the question is asked in a manner in which a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response can be the only appropriate reply, one cannot answer it on its own terms and avoid affirming its erroneous premises. One would implicate himself simply by answering. The question is fallacious because it leads one to accept a false premise, assuming either a) or b) are the actual case, if he should choose to take it seriously.
Likewise, a question which leads one to commit a fallacy in order to answer it is also invalid. If taken seriously, the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” will lead one to commit the fallacy of the stolen concept; indeed, the fallacy of the stolen concept is unavoidable on the question’s own terms, as we saw above. One would have both to assume and deny existence in order to address the question. If Martin Heidegger ,who originally asked this question, did not recognize this, it was principally because he was not operating on a fully rational philosophy. Yet, today we have theists assuming this question is valid all the time in the construction of their apologetic ruses. What is it that theists want to posit in response to their invalid questions so as to appear to satisfy them? Of course, they assume that the only logical answer is to assert a universe-creating, reality-ruling form of consciousness, which they call God, and delight themselves with this as their answer, never allowing themselves to recognize that the question leads them to accepting a stolen concept, and assuming that their arguments justifying this illicit move make it valid.
We don't really know. However since we can observe that there is something, rather than nothing, we can guess that it must have been harder for nothing to exist rather than something.
It's a guess and it need not be perfect, but I am afraid this might be as close we get to the answer of this question.
There is something rather than nothing, because it was easier for something to be.
Parmenides wrote in his poem, that he was brought before a goddess at the gates of Night and Day, in the abode of the Sun; and by steeds and chariot; and she told him there:
Come now, I will tell thee - and do thou hearken to my saying and carry it away - the only two ways of search that can be thought of. The first, that it is and that it is not possible for anything not to be - is the way of conviction
And continuing:
For truth is its companion; the other, namely that it is not - and that something must needs not be - that, I tell thee, is a wholly untrustworthy way. For you cannot know what is not - nor utter it.
Something then, always is; nothing - in the precise sense - can never be; even to name it, is to name something; in the imprecise sense - we have space, place, void, vacuums - but these, Parmenides is insisting is not nothing.
It suggests that Parmenides was reacting to, or deliberating, or compacting an argument of what it means to be and not, temporally or in-temporally.
Why is there something rather than nothing
Because the contrary - according to P - is precisely impossible; and is precisely unimaginable.
-Case 1: Nothing is not possible.
P_existence(nothing) = 0, P_existence(something) = 1. This answers the question.
-Case 2: Nothing is possible and it is the only possibility.
P_existence(nothing) = 1, P_existence(something) = 0. This is not our reality.
-Case 3: Nothing is possible. Transition probability to and from something is 0.
P_existence(nothing) > 0, P_existence(something) > 0.
Nothing is there, but we cannot experience it. The original question is under wrong premises: nothing is "somewhere", we just cannot experience it.
-Case 4: Nothing is possible. Transition probability to and from something are greater than zero.
Same as case 3, but we may transition to it in the future.
-Cases 5,6: As 3 and 4, but only one transition probability is zero.
I'm postulating the existence of a transition probability and an existence probability, which in a sense are more fundamental than even nothing and something. Case 4 is more natural, as it doesn't postulate measure zero probabilities. Too bad that there will be no experimenter around to test the prediction of a transition to nothing!
If optionally we want to address why we are in a "something state" since a long time ("long" in human subjective terms): perhaps the transition probability is asymmetric and much more likely in the nothing-->something direction, as in second law of thermodynamics. Indeed something has many microstates and large entropy, while the Boltzmann entropy of nothing is zero.
Despite Logical Positivists and others who will tell you that some questions are not fit to ask, I hold it as a personal truth that all questions that can be framed can be asked, and even from nonsense we can sometimes learn something, such as where we are personally mistaken in our understanding.
Given that, I say this looks like "what Martin Heidegger has called the fundamental question of metaphysics"as described by Art Witherall, so it has quite a pedigree! But its roots lie in the unresolved question of universals which dates back to Plato and Aristotle. See Problem of Universals on Wikipedia
One argument [given in answer to the question by @Saul] is: ".. if Nothing could be, then it would inevitably be Something - giving us a contradiction with our initial premises, thus demonstrating that Nothing cannot be."
But that has a whole bunch of issues about what kind of something, it seems on the face of it that it bootstraps Being, but really it just demonstrates the contradiction, not how the contradiction enables existence to be.
My understanding of the question is that the OP means how does it happen that we are here when so much is necessary to explain it? How does the Universe/Multiverse come about from an assumed earlier state of nothingness, or as an alternative to that state?
It is an expression of amazement, I think, and rightly so. And right up there with the top questions about us.
My answer is this:
I say there is a state I will call virtual that is very similar to the ideal of universals.
The nature of the virtual is that something of it is inherent in any reality [Axiom 1], at least, where it is created as a consequence of relationships. Therefore, if we consider a situation where no thing is real, nothing, no material reality, no time, no space, no God, we can see that this would be a real state of affairs, if it were so it would be a real null. So it would also imply a virtual state of affairs as the ideal of nothingness, which is the same as a null relationship. This is the something which the reality of nothing forces into being. It is not much, just a virtual link between nothing and itself.
It would be a dead end, going nowhere, if it were not for the second axiom concerning the virtual.
The other nature of the virtual is that whatever is logically implicit in one state [instance] of the virtual necessarily follows on from that state. [Axiom 2]
From axiom 2 we automatically, and necessarily, get the virtual state [predicate] of being. This virtual state is a relationship between the spirit [meaning/essence] of nothingness and the spirit [meaning/essence] of being. This is the first non-null relationship, but it is not a concrete thing, it is a virtual, abstract, thing, that exists nowhere and at no time.
That might not be perfectly argued, but the gist of it is, I think, valid.
The implications of this are many, but there are then even more steps to arrive at material existence. Which might include:
1) Number is a clear virtual consequence, and I imagine is still counting toward infinity, without being any closer, and in doing so provides a tick that is one measure of absolute time.
2) Dimension is a natural consequence of number, and so another virtual feature of existence, one that creates a multi-dimensional void.
3) Virtual time is only one thing happening after another, so having happened they remain, which is eternal.
4) Godel's Incompleteness Theorem suggests some things are unanswerable by mathematics alone, so there is a need for something like a universe to try things out and see what happens.
5) Consciousness could be in the relationships between the contents of mind, making it a virtual quality, rather than a physical quality of concrete brains.
6) The Big Bang takes place in the multi-dimensional void, creating a 3d Universe that expands as the surface with a common radius from ground zero. That surface is always now, and holds all the matter/energy. Consequentially yesterday is gone, and tomorrow not happened.
7) Material time is actually absolute, so all Relativity is about rate changing, not time. (space and time not really interchangeable, and no time travel)
8) Quantum effects are not interpretable as a block universe, but require something akin to the Transactional Interpretation to explain Young's Slits.
9) Other weird stuff happens, not yet accounted for by mainstream science.
10) Maybe death is not the end, except for our bodies.
So there you go. Maybe it is not all exactly correct, or is heretical in places, but that is the joy of asking questions, especially impossible ones!
PS. I am in no way qualified to claim any of the foregoing.
As some answers have remarked: The term "nothing" does not denote an object. Instead it is the negation of a statement of existence. Hence I would reformulate the OP's question as:
Why is there a world?
My answer: We live in the world. If there were no world, we would not exist and could not ask this question.
That's a kind of anthropic principle. Continuing and discussing a possible cause of the world is outside the scope of current science.
It's simple:
If there were nothing, we could not ask the question.
We can ask the question, so there is not nothing.
As there is not nothing, there is something.
One could argue that this answer "plays tricks" with it's own meta level, but that is because the question itself does that.
Is quantum foam nothing? If not, did it arise spontaneously?
‘There might be nothing’ is false when read epistemically. (Roughly, a proposition is epistemically possible if it is consistent with everything that is known.) For we know that something actually exists and knowledge of actuality precludes all rival epistemic possibilities. But when read metaphysically, ‘There might be nothing’ seems true. So ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ is, so far, a live question... Knowledge, even a priori knowledge, that something is actually true [that something exists] is compatible with ignorance as to how it could be true.
If we grant that empty worlds are possible (the linked to article discusses that), then we probably can, I think, ask why this world isn't empty. We're quite used to asking how it is that something possible isn't actual: so why isn't the actual world empty?
I'm not sure there's any convincing explanation of why, because I can't think even of what sort of explanation could work.
Some philosophers conclude ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ is unanswerable. They think the question stumps us by imposing an impossible explanatory demand, namely, Deduce the existence of something without using any existential premises. Logicians should feel no more ashamed of their inability to perform this deduction than geometers should feel ashamed at being unable to square the circle.
But I also like this quote there, which suggests that our awareness of nothingness is important.
One need only shut oneself in a closet and begin to think of the fact of one’s being there, of one’s queer bodily shape in the darkness … of one’s fantastic character and all, to have the wonder steal over the detail as much as over the general fact of being, and to see that it is only familiarity that blunts it. Not only that anything should be, but that this very thing should be, is mysterious [William James]!
A good question without an answer, even if there's no consensus that it can't be answered: that would depend most on "explanatory standards" and what we're willing to accept as an 'explanation'.
The quesion assumes what it must prove. The view that nothing really exists or ever really happens is widepread and is crucial to Buddhist philosophy and mysticism in general. First one would have to show that something exists, before asking the question, and this cannot be done.
This would be why the quesion is unansswerable. It makes an incorrect asxumption. Or at least, the assumption cannot be shown to be correct. History shows that if you hang on to this assumption metaphyscis cannot be solved.
A simple but fundamental answer:
There are only three answers to every question, "why?".
A note on answer #2: "because..." is ambiguous as the same answer can address two different questions very differently, e.g.
...can both be answered by, "because I am cold."
In the former case, physical cause is cited, in the latter, logic.
Towards answer #3, consider that the question is imponderable and otherwise: know thyself.
There is no equality at all in between "something" and "nothingness", and it asserts absolute differentiation (there is no the sameness at all) in between "something" and "nothingness".
Absolute differentiation in between "something" and "nothingness, it asserts essential differentiation (it’s not “i am different than you but we have the sameness a little bit”, but it’s strictly “there is nothing on me that exist within you”), therefore there is consequence:
If "something" has dimensional, then there will be no dimensional at all on another “nothingness”, and another “nothingness” is equal to “not exist” (we can ignore it, we consider it as “not exist”, since it requires no basic dimensional at all), and vice versa,
Whichever we choose, eventually it asserts there is only "dimensional", which asserts there is only "something" rather than "nothingness"
Why is there something instead of nothing?
- Both "something" Versus "nothingness" asserts (consequence that there is) only "dimensional" (which left behind) that must be related to "something".
It may be considered incomparable in between "something" Versus "nothingness" (whether it maybe considered "doesn't make sense", contradiction in between both or whatever), but it can be considered as our trial to push our logical to the farthest extent and see where is it going to? And eventually it asserts there is only "dimensional" which assert "something".
