Reddit reviews Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story
We found 12 Reddit comments about Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Liveright Publishing Corporation
Not many answers, but here's a book I'm working through now that focuses on the question.
A physicist named Lawrence Krauss wrote a book on this. Its called a universe from nothing. Good read. Also, if youre interested another good book that adresses different attempts to answer the question 'why is there something rather than nothing?' is called "Why does the world exist?" by Jim Holt.
Heres some links:
http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/145162445X
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-World-Exist-Existential/dp/0871403595/ref=la_B001IGFJ92_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367993510&sr=1-1
edit: I just noticed that someone else mentioned Krauss in an above comment. Sorry for redundancy.
> 1. World either exists since ever or was brought to existence.
If you were to assume the latter, then this argument doesn’t really make sense. There is a real danger of arguing in a circle and finishing up where we started. If, for example, I begin with the assumption (hypothesis) that ‘a God exists who created all things’, I cannot subsequently use the existence of the universe as an argument for the existence of God. In other words, reasoning that goes as follows is invalid:
In a valid syllogism the statements (1) and (2) would lead to a conclusion (3) that is not contained in either (1) and (2), but in this example we simply end up by deducing what we assumed in the first place.
If you believe in the former however, that the universe has always existed, that starts to make sense. Think about this;
"The Big Bang does not state that the cosmos somehow “leapt into being” out of a preexisting state of nothingness. To see why, lets’ play a tape of the universe's history backward. With the expansion reversed, we see the contents of the universe compressing together, growing more and more compressed. Ultimately, at the very beginning of cosmic history -- which, for convenience, we’ll label t=0 -- everything is in a state of infinite compression, shrunk to a point: the “singularity.” Now, Einstein’s general theory of relativity tells us that shape of space-time itself is determined by the way energy and matter are distributed. And when energy and matter are infinitely compressed, so too is space time. It simply disappears. It is tempting to imagine the Big bang to be like the beginning of a concert. You’re seated for a while fiddling with your program, and then suddenly at t=0 the music starts. But the analogy is mistaken. Unlike the beginning of a concert, the singularity at the beginning of the universe is not an event IN time. Rather, it is a temporal boundary or edge. There are no moments of time “before” t=0. So there was never a time when nothingness prevailed. And there was no “coming into being” - at least not a temporal one. Even though the universe is finite in age, it has always existed, if by “always” you mean at all instants of time. If there was never a transition from Nothing to Something, there is no need to look for a cause, divine or otherwise, that brought the universe into existence. Nor is there any need to worry about where all the matter and energy in the universe came from. There was no “sudden and fantastic” violation of the law of conservation of mass-energy at the Big Bang, as many theists claim. The universe has always had the same mass-energy content, from t=0 right up to the present."
(Taken from; Why Does The World Exist, by Jim Holt)
Nah. Lawrence Krauss' book has been unfavourably reviewed by theologans and atheist philosophers alike.
If you haven't read Jim Holt, give it a try. I really liked it
Great question! Here's a wikipedia article on the subject, here's a book I read a while back that I enjoyed(does not require prior experience with philosophy), and here's a summary of the debate for the more philosophically inclined.
Schad's quote pretty much takes this guy's argument out at the knees, but I don't like Dawson, Pinker, or Krauss either, and Sam Harris is an idiot. Tyson is adorable, but there was that problematic claim in his Cosmos series about the seeds of life coming to Earth on asteroids. These guys overreach like the egomaniacs that they are and the Skeptics should disavow them.
I've been reading a book for a couple of months called, Why Does the World Exist?. The author, Jim Holt, consults with physicists, philosophers, and cosmologists, among others, but none of the aforementioned individuals. It's a joy to read.
For anyone really interested in an accessible look at the philosophy and science of nothingness and how the universe could have emerged from it, I recommend this book.
This'll hardly explain it like you're five, but Jim Holt's book "Why Does the World Exist: An Existential Detective Story is fantastic further reading that essentially investigates this existential question from every angle. Historical theories, different philosophical theories/ideas, scientific study and theory (basic physics through to advanced quantum stuff)...
I really recommend it.
I actually preferred this book “Why the world exists” by Jim Holt.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-World-Exist-Existential/dp/0871403595
It’s more exhaustive when attempting to answer the question of existence from a critical perspective. Lawrence’s book seemed more geared towards people who shared his philosophical viewpoints IMO. Thanks for sharing though.
In my experience, nobody has offered a coherent explanation for why the universe exists (physics, in my view, only describes its contents and behaviors).
I'm not sure such an explanation is even possible in principle.
This book offers a digestible overview of the problem for some light reading: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-World-Exist-Existential/dp/0871403595
Perhaps this is the wrong question to ask.
Also you might appreciate this book; I found it interesting:
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Does-World-Exist-Existential/dp/0871403595
"Why is there something instead of nothing" is the fundamental question of reality. I enjoyed this post, thanks.
These are some of my favourites:
That's apart from Timothy Leary's "The Psychedelic Experience" and Huxley's "Doors of Perception" thought, those are must-reads.