Why Does The World Exist An Existential Detective Story Pdf

[Maribeth Seagers]

Thephilosophers are more interesting than the philosophy. Most of them are eccentric characters who have risen to the top of their profession. They think their deep thoughts in places of unusual beauty such as Paris and Oxford. They are heirs to an ancient tradition of academic hierarchy, in which disciples sat at the feet of sages, and sages enlightened disciples with Delphic utterances. The universities of Paris and Oxford have maintained this tradition for eight hundred years. The great world religions have maintained it even longer. Universities and religions are the most durable of human institutions.

According to Holt, the two most influential philosophers of the twentieth century were Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Heidegger supreme in continental Europe, Wittgenstein in the English-speaking world. Heidegger was one of the founders of existentialism, a school of philosophy that was especially attractive to French intellectuals. Heidegger himself lost his credibility in 1933 when he accepted the position of rector of the University of Freiburg under the newly established Hitler government and became a member of the Nazi Party. Existentialism continued to flourish in France after it faded in Germany.

In 1996 Leslie published a book, The End of the World, taking a gloomy view of the human situation. He was calculating the probable future duration of the human species, basing his argument on the Copernican principle, which says that the situation of the human observer in the cosmos should be in no way exceptional. Copernicus gave his name to this principle when he moved the earth from its position at the center of the Aristotelian universe and put it into a more modest position as one of the planets orbiting around the sun.

Leslie argued that the Copernican principle should apply to our position in time as well as to our position in space. As observers of the passage of time, we should not put ourselves into a privileged position at the beginning of the history of our species. As Copernican observers, we should expect to be in an average position in our history, rather than close to the beginning. Therefore, we should expect the future duration of our species to be not much longer than its past. Since we know that our species originated about a hundred thousand years ago, we should expect it to become extinct about a hundred thousand years from now.

There are many other kinds of multiverse besides the Everett version. Multiverse models are fashionable in recent theories of cosmology. Holt went to see the Russian cosmologist Alex Vilenkin at Tufts University in Boston. Unlike Deutsch, Vilenkin has multiple universes disconnected and widely separated from each other. Each arises out of nothing by a process known as quantum tunneling, spontaneously crossing the barrier between nonexistence and existence with no expenditure of energy. Universes spring into existence with precisely zero total energy, the positive energy of matter being equal and opposite to the negative energy of gravitation. Mass comes free because energy is zero.

For most of the twenty-five centuries since written history began, philosophers were important. Two groups of philosophers, Confucius and Lao Tse in China, and Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in Greece, were dominant figures in the cultures of Asia and Europe for two thousand years. Confucius and Aristotle set the style of thinking for Eastern and Western civilizations. They not only spoke to scholars but also to rulers. They had a deep influence in the practical worlds of politics and morality as well as in the intellectual worlds of science and scholarship.

In more recent centuries, philosophers were still leaders of human destiny. Descartes and Montesquieu in France, Spinoza in Holland, Hobbes and Locke in England, Hegel and Nietzsche in Germany, set their stamp on the divergent styles of nations as nationalism became the driving force in the history of Europe. Through all the vicissitudes of history, from classical Greece and China until the end of the nineteenth century, philosophers were giants playing a dominant role in the kingdom of the mind.

After the three committees had made their selections, we had three lists of names of people to be invited. I looked at the lists of names and was immediately struck by their disconnection. With a few exceptions, I knew personally all the people on the science list. On the history list, I knew the names, but I did not know the people personally. On the philosophy list, I did not even know the names.

In earlier centuries, scientists and historians and philosophers would have known one another. Newton and Locke were friends and colleagues in the English parliament of 1689, helping to establish constitutional government in England after the bloodless revolution of 1688. The bloody passions of the English Civil War were finally quieted by establishing a constitutional monarchy with limited powers. Constitutional monarchy was a system of government invented by philosophers. But in the twentieth century, science and history and philosophy had become separate cultures. We were three groups of specialists, living in separate communities and rarely speaking to each other.

Send your thoughts to Letters to the Editor. Learn moreJanuary 9, 2014Share on FacebookShare on TwitterEmail to a friendPrint I was watching "The Sound of Music" (the original movie version) on TV just before Christmas, and there was Julie Andrews, declaring her love for Captain Von Trapp. In the midst of her admission, she sings, "Nothing comes from nothing; nothing ever could." Those words hit me with a powerful force. She was proclaiming in lyrical form the foundation of the Thomistic argument for the existence of God. I thought, Yes, she is right. This is what I think, too. Good for you, Julie.

During the Christmas season, when belief is so essential, I think many of us find ourselves struggling to hang onto the meaning of the words we hear. Our religious experience is not like it was a long time ago, when we took the whole Christmas story literally, along with almost everything else in the Bible. Now we know too much; we're too full of doubt about so many things close to our religious belief. Did the Christmas story really happen or is it a fable written for our edification? Were the census and the stable and the manger birth and the shepherds and that star that moved through the sky all part of a beautiful story meant to solidify faith? The same questions arise for so much in our Scriptures: the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, the miracles Jesus performed, even (dare I say it) his Resurrection from the dead.

I listen to the readings at Mass, trying to grasp the spiritual message, but my brain keeps interrupting me. Did these things really happen or were they composed 30, 40, 50 years or more after events by writers determined to pass on their faith? Eyewitnesses they were not. So I wonder which are the very words of Jesus? Which are the real miracles of healing he performed? And which are the things we would like him to have said? And which are the wonders we would like him to have performed? I know what the Scripture scholars say about all this, and I'm not totally reassured.

Talk about the leap of faith! In the old days, I had no trouble with that. It was a reasonable jump of about 3 feet. Now there's an incredible chasm to get across. And I believe a lot of us have to pole vault our way from doubt to belief.

Of course in the old days, we were comforted and supported by our respect for the Magisterium, the church's teaching authority, guaranteed through the presence of the Holy Spirit: If the church says these stories are credible, then they're credible. If the church says Jesus performed marvels and wonders we say, Amen! But that vaunted authority of the Roman Catholic church has taken numerous body blows and suffered serious destabilization, especially in the last 12 years because of a series of missteps, gaffes and revelations of hypocrisy, many connected with the priest abuse crisis. So it's hard to stay calm and just entrust our insecurities to those in charge.

To put it another way, we were once comfortable in our deck chairs on the great barque of Peter, enjoying the warm sun and gentle breezes on our voyage through life. To be sure, some are still lounging comfortably on the big ship, confident that the captain and his staff on the bridge are in control. But many have gone below decks, worrying if the ship is on the right course -- or any course, for that matter -- while still others have lost so much confidence they've abandoned ship and are adrift in lifeboats, wondering when the next storm will come up. Some, too, are so disenchanted they're in the water hanging on for dear life on the side of a lifeboat or just drifting out to sea.

So I'm looking for something solid to hang onto in this age of uncertainty. I've read a lot on the scientific underpinnings of belief. Last year, I devoured Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story. It's a fascinating search, with author Jim Holt looking for some big answers to big questions. He travels around the world interviewing philosophers and scientists. He discusses with them all kinds of theories as to why there is anything at all. Some have elaborate, mathematical explanations, some of which I was able to connect with only dimly. Some of the experts seem uninterested that any seeker should want to go beyond the Big Bang as an explanation for everything. I had great hopes for Holt's Thomistic expert, but he was little help. As to the theory that nothing comes from nothing (and therefore there must exist a necessary, eternal entity), some scientists claimed that something can come from nothing. They had created inside a large container an absolute vacuum, so secure that nothing could possibly get in or get out. And eureka! They discovered after some time little specks of matter floating in this perfect vacuum. Their conclusion: Something had come from nothing. My conclusion: These bits of reality were in the container undetected all along or their vacuum wasn't as absolute as they thought it to be.

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