Why the World Exists

In his new book, “Why Does the World Exist?,” Jim Holt throws everything he’s got at the question. He reads Wittgenstein and Plato. He meets with leading physicists, theologians and philosophers. He considers the relative strength of answers like God, multiple universes and Just Because. And he does all this without making the lay reader’s head explode. And in an interview, he implores:

Please, please look up Derek Parfit’s essay “Why Anything? Why This?,” published in two parts in the London Review of Books (January 22 and February 5, 1998). If you’re like me, Parfit’s essay will make you weep tears of intellectual joy." Jim Holt

I did look it up. It didn't make me cry, though I did enjoy it a lot. But I don't agree with Wittgenstein:

Doubt can exist only where there is a question; and a question only where there is an answer.

My view:

Questions can exist where we think answers are possible, but of course we can always be mistaken. 

No Small Talk: Jim Holt on Why the World Exists - NYTimes.com

The wrong question?

There's nothing wrong with asking wrong questions. How else are you gonna get around to the right ones?

"Asking why there is something rather than nothing presumes “nothing” is the natural state of things out of which “something” needs an explanation. Maybe “something” is the natural state of things and “nothing” would be the mystery to be solved. As the physicist Victor Stenger notes in his book, The Fallacy of Fine Tuning: “Current cosmology suggests that no laws of physics were violated in bringing the universe into existence. The laws of physics themselves are shown to correspond to what one would expect if the universe appeared from nothing. There is something rather than nothing because something is more stable.” Michael Shermer

Skeptic » eSkeptic » Wednesday, July 11th, 2012