Small patches of illumination surrounded by an uncharted expanse of darkness…‏

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

1 comentario:

  1. 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.



    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.

    ResponderEliminar

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