Book why does the world exist

English, Paperback, Holt Jim. Enter pincode. Usually delivered in 2 weeks? Holt Jim. Tackling the "darkest question in all of philosophy" with "raffish erudition" Dwight Garner, New York Times , author Jim Holt explores the greatest metaphysical mystery of all: why is there something rather than nothing?

This runaway bestseller, which has captured the imagination of critics and the public alike, traces our latest efforts to grasp the origins of the universe. Holt adopts the role of cosmological detective, traveling the globe to interview a host of celebrated scientists, philosophers, and writers, "testing the contentions of one against the theories of the other" Jeremy Bernstein, Wall Street Journal. Now Holt interviews David Deutsch , a physicist who rejects any foundation for our existence.

If you believe God is something very definite—say loving, kind, or jealous—then you must answer why your god is that way and not another. Next Holt talks with the physicist and mathematical Platonist Roger Penrose. Penrose posits that there are three worlds: the physical world, the world consisting of consciousness, and the Platonic world of pure forms.

Penrose believes there is a connection between the physical world and our minds, which themselves connect us to the Platonic world via mathematics. Ultimately, our physical brains are constructed out of material that is itself intimately related to the Platonic world of mathematics.

And no amount of feeling that mathematics has such powers confirms that it does. Might it have the creative power to give birth to the world? The philosopher John Leslie believes something like this. Things are as they are because that is the way they ought to be. Naturally, this raises the question of why, from an infinite number of possible universes, one like ours exists, with its arbitrary amount of goodness and badness.

Why would an infinite mind conjure up a universe as imperfect as our own? Leslie replies with an analogy.

The Louvre has paintings of various quality, not just multiple perfect replicas of the Mona Lisa, and this makes the Louvre a more interesting museum.

But why does goodness give rise to infinite minds in the first place? Why does ought to exist, imply, does exists? Of course, this argument is circular—goodness creates the world and the evidence for goodness is the existence of the world. Holt appears to agree. The last philosopher Holt speaks with is Derek Parfit , one of the giants of contemporary philosophy. Parfit starts by considering that reality could have turned out differently—it could have been like the reality we live in or it could have been a different reality.

There are an infinite number of possibilities. In between there are an infinite number of possibilities such as: only good universes exist, only 58 universes exist, only worlds that obey string theory exist, only bad worlds exist, only red worlds exist, etc.

Of all these cosmic possibilities at least one of them must obtain. So the question is, which one and why? But the existence of our reality contradicts this hypothesis. This leads Parfit to conclude that the all worlds hypothesis is the least arbitrary since with any other hypothesis one has to ask further questions like: why do only good worlds or bad worlds, or worlds that obey string theory exist?

As for our own reality, it may be part of the axiarchic or good worlds, or the string theory worlds, or the bad worlds, or some other world. Parfit concludes that the null hypothesis is the simplest, the all worlds hypothesis the fullest, the axiarchic hypothesis the best and so on. Now Parfit wonders if a cosmic possibility obtains because it has a special feature like fullness or simplicity or goodness.

Now, what if that feature chooses reality? Because if you don't, I'm going to explain it to you now. And I did, I remember Alan Guth telling it to me just after he'd found the original false vacuum construction like it was yesterday.

And I took it slowly, step by step, and I said Jim, don't you see, in the false vacuum the metric is basically just the original de Sitter one so you get exponential expansion. It's easy. TTT: I'm not sure I'm still following you JR: That's what he said too. And I said Jim, you have read de Sitter's paper, right? And you know what? He hadn't. Just had his head full of trivial philosophy. TTT: Uh JR: But that's not the worst part. He showed me his interview with Roger Penrose, I mean, Roger was doing him such a favor agreeing to talk to him in the first place, and all Jim could do was go on and on about neo-Platonism.

He'd read like the first chapter of The Road to Reality and he'd missed all the interesting passages where Roger's using thermodynamic arguments to undermine the validity of the inflationary approach. They could have had like this amazingly interesting discussion, and he totally fluffed it.

No wonder Roger made an excuse after half an hour. TTT: Talking of which JR: OMG, is that the time? I'm sorry, I really have to leave like five minutes ago, I hope you got everything you needed. And hey, I feel I've been such a bitch talking about Jim this way, I mean he's a nice guy and all and I'm sorry about his dog and his mother, but you know, he just totally pushes all my buttons. As Jean-Paul would have said, c'est plus fort que moi.

TTT: I understand, Jessica. It's been a real pleasure talking to you. And good luck with your new book. JR: Thanks! It's been fun. View all 43 comments. Manny Well, that's not very smart. Well, that's not very smart. Jocaxx barcellos search on browser: "Jocaxian Nothingness" search on browser: "Jocaxian Nothingness" Jul 22, Daniel Bastian rated it it was amazing Shelves: reviewed. The secret to existence. The riddle of Being. That it hugs academic borders so closely and is so charged with ideological subtext are surely clues to its significance.

No other question has battled against such a succession of brilliance and come away as unscathed. In Why Does the World Exist? Have we at last solved the foggiest mystery of all? And like a bottle of Bordeaux, this one only gets better with age. And Then There Was Time Most scientists through the late 20th century accepted the existence of the universe as a brute fact, with explanation outside the bounds of scientific inquiry. Unpacking its history—from its breathtaking early expansion to quasars and circumstellar disks—continued apace, but was regarded as distinct from the project taken up by Holt and his predecessors.

It was a matter of specialization, with science angled toward the how and philosophy shoveling below to the ultimate Whys. According to most cosmologists, the universe has a finite past, ultimately traceable to a singularity event roughly fourteen billion years ago. Though the precise nature of this event remains murky, we can infer from the redshift of distant galaxies and remnant radiation from the early universe the absolute age of all space and all time.

This spatio-temporal boundary dictates what questions we can entertain. In short, asking what happened before the Big Bang?

We count this conceit as self-evident today, but it actually harks back to Leibniz, the 17th century polymath, who held that time is not absolute, but can only exist in a universe in which the relationship between mass and energy changes see relational theory.

Otherwise put, if time is not involved, events do not occur. If this view is correct, the singularity gave rise to time itself, beyond which the very concepts of cause and effect break down—along with our known laws of physics. Rather like a curtain that conceals the goings-on behind it, the Big Bang is a comprehensive model whose explanatory scope cuts off at the singularity.

Horizon or no, one does not need a crash course in the Big Bang-origin of spacetime to surmise that the singularity stands in need of explanation as well. Pointing up the latest advances in particle physics and cosmology, Krauss, Hawking and Michiu Kaku contend not only that our universe indeed came from nothing, but that we have pinned down the particular nothing from which it emerged.

In A Universe From Nothing , Krauss sees it as an unstable vacuum state in which particles and antiparticles dart in and out of existence according to physical laws. The physicist David Deutsch gives a strenuous defense of this point in his conversation with Holt. The quantum vacuum is a highly structured thing that obeys deep and complex laws of physics.

Who or what determined them? For even a theory of everything would be part of the something to be explained. More to the point, even if we were able to conclude, thanks to a more complete understanding of physics, that a cosmogonic singularity was inevitable given the fields, forces or fluctuations involved, we may still ask: why do we find ourselves in a universe or multiverse spawned by a vacuum state furnished with the ingredients necessary to wink it into existence?

Why not a different mixture of ingredients devoid of universe-issuing potential, or none at all? But the final theory of physics would still leave a residue of mystery—why this force, why this law? It would not contain within itself an answer to the question of why it was the final theory. So it would not live up to the principle that every fact must have an explanation—the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

Brute Fact: Universe or God? One way out of this quagmire is to posit a supernatural intelligence that poofed the world into existence. It is valid as concerns the proximate question, but skirts the one underneath. If the universe needs a cause, does God not need one as well?

Philosophers and theologians have tussled with this dilemma in various ways. Aquinas rejected this outright , contending that no entity can cause itself because it would have to exist prior to itself—a logical contradiction. Instead, he adduced the argument from contingency , which says that all causes depend on some prior cause, and since there cannot be an infinite series of causes they must terminate in a necessary, or non-contingent, being.

Holt finds these arguments problematic. And he is in good company; Hume, Kant and Russell had their suspicions as well, though for different reasons. Yet he himself has no ontological foundation. His essence does not include existence. His being is not logically necessary. He might not have existed. There might have been no God, nothing at all. If the Universe requires something to create it, why not God? Likewise, if you want to say that God is uncaused and requires no explanation, on what non-arbitrary grounds can the Universe not exist uncaused and unexplained as well?

In the assertion 'X exists as a function of its own essence', neither term comes out obviously ahead. Both represent unique metaphysical claims, and both propositions can be derived through logical means.

Whatever new entities we might insert to fill the explanatory void ushers us right back to square one. We can throw up our hands, reject the aforesaid PSR and accept one or another brute fact, the balance of which tends to settle along ideological lines. The Road to Abstractification Having given the less exotic ideas a fair shake, Holt ventures off into ever more obscure pastures. He dives under the currents of Platonism and the many colorful interpretations currently jostling for stature, such as the notion that math and morality have an external reality as opposed to being mere human constructions.

Names, theories and seminal texts are dropped routinely, but not at random. Some of the answers he fields prove just as mysterious as the question itself. From Dust to Dust Without a universe, there would be nothing to ask and no one to do the asking—no angst, no joy, no existential weariness. Holt wishes to remind us that things did not turn out this way. We are here, questions in hand, and this fact alone is of unexampled significance.

It is also what compels philosophers like Holt to obsess over the intellectual hunt. Holt remains content to bask in this greatest of mysteries, coveting a verdict yet wary of relinquishing his skepticism prematurely. Perhaps our human perspective limits our ability to ask the right questions. Or, as equally disconcerting for someone who expects reimbursement for their intellectual labors, perhaps not every question has an answer. Alas, if there is ever to be an ultimate explanation of reality, how would we know we had found it?

The intellectual rigor is interrupted as Holt grieves the death of his dog and later the loss of his mother, only to be picked up over lavish dinners at the local brasserie. His transitions from abstract argument to the definite realities of his own existence make this more than a pallid retread of ideas. And given the ultimacy of the quest before us, is that not as much as we could expect? Note: This review is republished from my official website.

View all 14 comments. Aug 19, Lori rated it liked it Shelves: book-club. I haven't argued with a book as much as this one I was furious, outraged, bombastic. How can people get away with such partial and idiotic arguments, and how can anyone take them seriously.

The book irritated me, to say the least, and all I wanted to do was sit across a table from Holt and from everyone he interviewed except David Deutsch and Steven Weinberg and ask them if they were really kidding.

It's an unanswerable question, why there is something rather than nothing, and I haven't argued with a book as much as this one It's an unanswerable question, why there is something rather than nothing, and anyone who says they have the answer especially with certainty is suspect, to say the least and I'm trying hard to say the least, here.

With such an essentially and inherently unanswerable question, the question then becomes why are you asking it? What does it mean to you? What would the various answers mean to you? THOSE are the interesting questions. Recommended if you want to have an argument and there's no one around. View all 15 comments. Jan 18, Ed rated it did not like it. This supremely unimportant book raises three deep and troubling questions.

The first is: Why in blazes did I buy it? By way of apology more than explanation I did struggle with Heidigger in graduate school back in and thought this might be a good way to revive my earlier befuddlement. Befuddlement revived?

Good way? Not so much. The principle P explains why other laws hold true: because they have characteristic C. But what explains why P is true? Well, suppose that P turned out to have characteristic C. Then the truth of P would logically follow from P itself! I am not a believer, but by the end of the book, the only chapter that made any sense at all was the one outlining a theological answer. Second: Why would anyone buy this book?

Carrying around a copy of Why does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story might just do it. Could work, right? Or - maybe you just have trouble falling asleep. Third: Why all the personal details? Why do we care if Jim only finishes half a bottle of St. Or eats biscuits and tea. I do, however, understand why he repeatedly reminds the reader that he was born and raised a Roman Catholic and, at an early age, rejected the faith.

See, I can inject foreign phrases just like Jim. Coming soon to a kindle near you. One star? View all 4 comments. Jan 18, Chris Horsefield rated it liked it. The author considers all possible perspectives, a strategy which makes the discussion a bit vague and directionless in my opinion. Jan 12, Craig Werner rated it did not like it Shelves: religion-spirituality , science , philosophy.

This book came to me via the very positive New York Times Book Review review, and it made the Times list of best books of the year.

Certianlyk the organizing question--why does the universe exist? Or at least I thought it was until I read the book. After reading it, I'm convinced that almost everyone who addresses it is deeply mired in circular thinking of the sort where the argument i This book came to me via the very positive New York Times Book Review review, and it made the Times list of best books of the year.

After reading it, I'm convinced that almost everyone who addresses it is deeply mired in circular thinking of the sort where the argument is determined in advance by the desired conclusion. Some of the people Holt talked to are familiar names in the worlds of philosophy and cosmology and I'll take his word that the others are Well Thought Of in their professional worlds.

Almost all come off as smug and self-important. And Holt simply drove me nuts. The chapters where he veers into his own speculations are simply awful. I think he was trying to provide a sense of an intellectual journey, but his attempts at synthesis are trite. I got really tired of hearing about what he ate for dinner before he went to talk to the man of the moment. Some of the sketches of the interviewees are well drawn.

But that's about it. What strikes me in retrospect is how sure the speakers are that the fundamental questions can be answered in rational, logical and fundamentally Western terms. I read a fair amount of eastern philosophy--Buddhism, Taoism--and on this question I radically prefer the humility and openness to wonder of the Tao Te Ching or Huang Po. View all 3 comments. Nov 06, Riku Sayuj rated it it was ok Shelves: books-about-books , physics , science-gen , science-physics.

Science cannot answer the deepest questions. As soon as you ask why there is something instead of nothing, you have gone beyond science. You have JavaScript disabled. Menu Main menu. Watch TED Talks. Jim Holt Writer and philosopher. Jim Holt on Wikipedia. TED Speaker Personal profile.