What Is Real · ages 9–12
Why is there something instead of nothing?
Nothing cannot make something. So where did all of this come from?
Ask a child why there is something rather than nothing, and you get one of the oldest questions in philosophy, stated roughly as well as anyone has managed.
The trap is in the word nothing. If nothing is a thing, then it had properties, which is absurd. If it is not a thing, then “there was nothing and then there was something” is not a story about a change — because a change needs a state before it. Most people who try to write the sentence down find the grammar itself fighting back.
There are three exits people take. One is to say the universe needs no explanation, and that asking why is like asking what is north of the North Pole. One is to say something exists necessarily, which means the question is closed by definition — but it is worth noticing how many different things have been proposed as the necessarily-existing thing. One is to admit the question may be unanswerable from inside the universe it asks about.
What makes it a good question for children is that it cannot be answered by looking. You can spend a lifetime, and no experiment will produce the answer, because every experiment is inside the thing being asked about. Whether that means the question is profound or badly formed is exactly the argument.
Try it
Say the sentence 'there could have been nothing' and then ask what would have been left to have the possibility. Write down anything you find that does not smuggle something in.
What do you think?
Do you think there is a right answer to this question?
Talk about it
- Is 'nothing' a thing?
- Could something come from nothing?
- Does the question have an answer, or only a feeling of one?
Yes, but… — the arguments people actually make
Everything has a cause, so the universe must have one.
If everything has a cause, so does the cause of the universe, and you are off on an endless staircase. If some things do not need causes, the universe might be one of them.
It's obvious something exists, so stop asking.
You are standing in the middle of the answer and asking to be excused the question. That the world exists is not an explanation of why.
God did it. Question closed.
Then a new question opens in the same place: why is there a God rather than no God? Which means the original question was not closed, only moved.
What other philosophers think
- ParmenidesArgued that nothing can come into being, because it would have to come from what is not — and what is not is not anything to come from.
- Gottfried LeibnizAsked why there is something rather than nothing, and took it as the deepest question, because it asks for a reason for everything at once.
- David HumeSuspected the question has no answer we could ever reach: a cause for the whole universe would have to be outside it, and we are not.
- Ludwig WittgensteinThought the question comes from language going on holiday — 'nothing' behaves like a name for something, so we go looking for it.
If you want to go further
- The Principles of Nature and Grace — Gottfried LeibnizThe 'principle of sufficient reason' in a few pages, and the question stated plainly.
- Why Anything? A Parable — Derek ParfitShort, sharp, and unusually honest about how little we know.
Most of these were written for adults, which is why it is worth reading them with someone older.