Why is there something rather than nothing?

is a question that cannot be answered in the way we might answer the question, "Why do birds migrate to the same place every winter?" or "Why is there more crime in the United States than in Japan?"

Why is there something rather than nothing? Strange as this question is, it seems oddly familiar. Puzzling though it is, it has a certain unique simplicity. This is not to say that it can be answered in the way we might answer the question, "Why do birds migrate to the same place every winter?" or "Why is there more crime in the United States than in Japan?" These questions stand a chance of being resolved by scientific research. But no scientific investigation can tell us why there is something rather than nothing. Science describes the things we find around us, and it explains how some of these things are caused by others, but it cannot say why the whole exists. The Big Bang theory may be correct - but it does not answer why there was a Big Bang rather than nothing. We might say that God made the Big Bang. But then, why is there God? Perhaps God exists by necessity. However, few thinkers these days accept the idea of a necessary being whose existence we can know and prove. Most would agree that whatever we may propose as the cause of everything is itself something whose existence stands in need of explanation.

is a question whereby the ‘why’ is not a search for a cause, but an act of celebration. When we ask the question, we celebrate the fact that anything exists at all; we pause to notice this amazing fact.

Maybe its meaning comes from the special character of its "why". Maybe the "why" in this question is not a search for a cause, but an act of celebration. When we ask the question, we celebrate the fact that anything exists at all. We notice this amazing fact. Normally the existence of things is so familiar to us that we take it for granted. But at certain moments, this most familiar of facts can become surprising.

is a question whereby, once we recognize it’s not a question to be answered, but an occasion to wonder, we are given further to wonder about this extraordinary thing that it is ‘to be’.

Ludwig Wittgenstein describes the experience this way: "I wonder at the existence of the world. And I am then inclined to use such phrases as 'how extraordinary that anything should exist' or 'how extraordinary that the world should exist'. "3 Once we have noticed and celebrated the fact that beings are, we can take a step further - and everything depends on this step. We can ask: what does this "are" mean? What is it to be? Now we are asking what makes a being count as a being, instead of as nothing: on what basis do we understand beings as beings? Now we are asking not about beings, but about Being.

why is there something rather than nothing?, n.Definitions

why is there something rather than nothing?