NOTES FOR WHY IS THERE ANYTHING AT ALL? - 1 Dr. Michael Gemignani mgmign2@verizon.

net A preface regarding source material: The original inspiration for this course was Jim Holts book Why Does the World Exist?, Liverright, New York, 2012, from which I draw heavily. In discussing time, I use material from The Great Courses lectures by Sean Carroll on Time. There are numerous other sources I could mention, and I have, of course, added my own ideas, organization, and commentary. If you believe I have stolen something from someone else, you are probably right. This course is a hodgepodge from all over the intellectual landscape. So be it. Deal with it. If you must miss a class and want the notes from that class, you can find them at www.scribd.com, Search for Why is there anything at all. Jim Holts quick proof: Suppose there were nothing. Then there are no laws, because laws are something. But if there are no laws, nothing is forbidden, so there must be something. A ham sandwich is better than nothing. Nothing is better than God. Therefore a ham sandwich is better than God. What really are we talking about? Queen Victoria to her daughter Princess Victoria of Hesse, 23 August 1883: I would earnestly warn you against trying to find out the reason and explanation of everything . . . .To try to find out the reason for everything is very dangerous and leads to nothing but disappointment and dissatisfaction, unsettling your mind and making you miserable. You will go to Michelle and tell her you want your money back because I spent too much time talking about nothing. But did I teach you nothing about something, or something about nothing? Buddhist do not trouble themselves with the question of how the universe came about, but are concerned about what to do about it. When one is hit by a poison arrow, he is not concerned about who shot the arrow or where the arrow came from but to find an antidote for the poison. If we are on an out of control carrousel, we do not look for the name of the manufacturer, or even the location of the amusement park. We simply want to get off safely. Change is an illusion and we are to exit the universe of change and suffering to find rest in Enlightenment. No amount of causes can make something from nothing. Leibnitz Principle of Sufficient Reason - There is an understandable reason for everything being the way it is. In essence, things do not happen chaotically. If an event occurs, it is because something caused it to be happen, the cause being the reason it happened. Science requires the PSR to go about its work. If we do not have an orderly universe, then we cannot construct orderly theories about why the universe is the way it is.

The empty set - The set that contains nothing. But if it contains nothing, it contains something. We need a better definition. 0 = {x| x is not equal to x}. Any element of the empty set has any possible property. Does the empty set exist? Where does it exist? As a mental concept only. Does it then exist in the real universe? In what sense? Perhaps it exists only in the realm of Platonic forms. Returning to our ham sandwich example: A ham sandwich is better than nothing. {ham sandwich} > 0 Nothing is better than God. {God} > anything else Therefore a ham sandwich is better than God. {God} > ham sandwich Collections of things = sets. But assuming anything can be a set leads to contradictions. The set of all sets that do not contain themselves. Russells paradox. Infinity - We will discuss theories that assuming an infinite of possible universes. But what is infinity and what kind of infinity are we talking about? Countable v. uncountable infinity. In fact there are infinitely many infinities. But perhaps our brains filter out all the chaotic stuff and leave us with only what is organized, or what can be organized. How much is there that we cannot sense because if we did sense it, the world would no longer make sense, Perhaps some of those who are mentally ill do not have adequate filters so they are overwhelmed by the chaos that we normal people see as structured. We like structure. We are pattern recognizing animals. We even see patterns where there are no patterns so anxious are we to make sense of our world. We create our world in this sense. A scientific theory is a model of some aspect of the observable universe. It is necessarily takes some factors into account and leaves out others. The set if factors one theory takes into account can be different from the set of factors another theory takes into account to explain the same aspect of the universe. A theory models; it does not explain and it is distinct from the material universe itself . . . or is it? Are mathematical structures like groups, fields, differential equations, human constructs or are they discovered aspects of reality? Why does mathematics do such a seemingly good job of providing us with models of the universe? Are the theories inherent in reality or is our reality inherent in our models? Do we see what we think we ought to see? We are going to discuss creation, but what is creation? Creation is bringing into being something that previously was not in being. Creation is taking place all around us, and in and through us as well. Creation from nothingness, creation ex nihilo involves bringing to being something whereas prior to its creation there was only nothingness. Note: Only a very few creation myths involve creation ex nihilo. Most such myths do not explain why there is something rather than nothing, but why there is this something. Native American creation myths talk about how the Indians learned to grow corn, or how they acquired their rituals, but they do not start with nothingness. Not how the universe came to be but how the universe came to be as it is.

What do we see in all of these images? Does one image bother us more than the others? Why? Some fundamental questions: 1) Is nothingness possible? In our current universe, the answer is no. As we shall see, even empty space is not empty. But is it possible to have a condition of no space and no time? Yes, in some scientific models of the BB. Is nothingness possible as a mental construct: 0? 2) If something comes into being whereas before there was only nothingness, must there not have been a cause for that to happen, or could it happen purely spontaneously without a cause? Aristotle believed in spontaneous events. But if events can happen spontaneously, how can we explain them scientifically? Spontaneous events in quantum theory.