Why anything? Why this?
Why is there a Universe at all?
No explanation for the fact
that there's no explanation.
Though this might be true,
we should not assume that must be true.
Even to discover how things are, we need explanations.
GOD JUST HIM
Why anything? Why this?
ResponderEliminarWhy is there a Universe at all?
No explanation for the fact
that there's no explanation.
Though this might be true,
we should not assume that must be true.
Even to discover how things are, we need explanations.
And we may need explanations on the grandest scale.
Our world may seem to have some feature
that would be unlikely to be a coincidence.
Even if all explanations
mutt end with a brute fact,
we should go on trying to explain
why the Universe exists, and is as it is.
We may never be able
to answer these questions,
either because our world
is only a small part of reality,
or because, though our world
is the whole of reality,
we could never know that to be true,
or because of our own limitations.
It can seem astonishing, for example,
how reality could be made to be as it is.
It may seem baffling
how reality could be
even randomly selected.
What kind of process
could select whether, for example,
time had no beginning,
or whether anything ever exists?
When, and how,
could any selection be made?
This is not a real problem.
Of all the possible ways
that reality might be,
there must be one
that is the way
reality actually is.
Since it is logically necessary
that reality be some way or other,
it is necessary that one way
be picked to be the way reality is.
Logic ensures that,
without any kind of process,
a selection is made.
There is no need for hidden machinery.
If our world
has no very special features,
there would then be nothing
that was deeply puzzling.
If it were necessary
that some global possibility
be randomly selected,
while there would be
no explanation of why
the selection went as it did,
there would be no mystery
in reality’s being as it is.
Reality’s features
would be inexplicable,
but only in the way
in which it is inexplicable
how some particle randomly moves.
If a particle can merely
happen to move as it does,
reality could merely
happen to be as it is.
Randomness
may even be less puzzling
at the level of the whole Universe,
since we know that facts at this level
could not have been caused.
The existence of the Universe
can seem, in another way, astonishing.
Even if it is not baffling
that reality was made to be some way,
since there is no conceivable alternative,
it can seem baffling that the selection went as it did.
Why is there a Universe at all?
Why doesn’t reality take
its simplest and least arbitrary form:
that in which nothing ever exists?
If we find this astonishing,
we are assuming
that these features
should be the selectors:
that reality should be as simple
and unarbitrary as it could be.
But, just as
the simplest cosmic possibility
is that nothing ever exists,
the simplest explanatory possibility
is that there is no selector.
So we should not expect simplicity
at both the factual and explanatory levels.
If there is no selector,
we should not expect
that there would
also be no Universe.
That would be an extreme coincidence.
Determinism, independence and objectivity is inconsistent?
_____________
[Random excerpts from an essay not yet properly read,
with additions taken from other places, including the title.
The result has not been checked to see if it does make sense.]
The idea is to read, at least once, the article appeared
some years ago in the London Review of Books
and try to understand it and deliver a transcript of that essay.