Is there an explanation for existence?

Amanda Gefter, contributor

In Why Does the World Exist? Jim Holt spans physics, philosophy and literature to examine the mystery of why there is something rather than nothing

NOVELIST Martin Amis once said we are about five Einsteins away from explaining the universe's existence. "His estimate seemed about right to me," says Jim Holt at the beginning of his book Why Does the World Exist? "But I wondered," he continues, "could any of those Einsteins be around today? It was obviously not my place to aspire to be one of them. But if I could find one, or maybe two or three or even four of them, and then sort of arrange them in the right order... well, that would be an excellent quest." Thus begins his humorous yet deeply profound journey to solve the great mystery: why is there something rather than nothing?

Holt's potential Einsteins span physics, philosophy and literature, from mathematician Roger Penrose through physicist Steven Weinberg to novelist John Updike. Yet somehow the most interesting parts of the book come not from Holt's subjects, but from his own musings. More philosophical than scientific in bent, Holt wants not only an explanation of how you get something from nothing but also how such an explanation might be possible at all.

It's a thorny pursuit. You can't explain existence with reference to something else, but neither can it be a causal loop, Holt argues, stating "no truth explains itself".

When Holt visits Adolf Gr?nbaum in Pittsburgh, the philosopher of science tries to convince him that the question is a waste of time, based as it is on the mistaken assumption that nothingness is a more natural state of affairs than the universe. There is no need to explain existence, he says, because there's nothing astonishing about existence in the first place. "If, as Aristotle remarked, philosophy begins with wonder, then it ends with Gr?nbaum," Holt writes.

Luckily for us, he doesn't get discouraged and treks on, requesting a meeting with University of Oxford physicist David Deutsch. Yet he also puts a kink in Holt's quest, by suggesting that the laws of physics are incapable of accounting for existence. "Laws don't do that kind of work," Deutsch says.

Mathematics, too, seems incapable of heavy existential lifting when Holt notes, somewhat unjustifiably, that mathematical structure "just doesn't seem enough for genuine being". Still, he presses on.

Though Why Does the World Exist? is far more intellectually sophisticated than other recent books on the subject, it could have benefited from some deeper delving into physics. While Holt expends a great deal of effort attempting to unravel the philosophical meaning of Nothing, he hardly bothers looking for the physical meaning of Something. And that side of the coin may hold important clues to the mystery.

For instance, Holt writes that a theory of everything, uniting relativity and quantum mechanics, would be the closest science can get to an explanation for existence. "But the final theory of physics would still leave a residue of mystery - why this force, why this law?" Holt writes. "It would not live up to the principle that every fact must have an explanation: the Principle of Sufficient Reason. On the face of it, the only theory that does obey this principle is the Theory of Nothingness. That is why it's surprising that the Theory of Nothingness turns out to be false, that there is a world of Something."

When we try to understand Something in physics, though, many of our intuitions about physical reality fall away. Beyond relativity and quantum theory, the latest thinking in theoretical physics suggests that the Something all around us might be nothing more physical than a holographic projection of information on the universe's boundary. And far from being a theory about tiny, vibrating strings, string theory - the candidate theory of everything - doesn't seem to be about any particular objects at all. The closer we look at Something, the less we find there.

• Book Information
• by Jim Holt
• Published by: Profile/ W.W. Norton
• ?12.99/$27.95

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