Life, the Universe and nothing
The metaphysical 'rule' that out of nothing nothing comes represents an unwillingness to recognise that nature may be cleverer than philosophers or theologians, argues Lawrence M. Krauss.
The central problem with the notion of creation is that it appears to require some externality, something outside of the system itself to pre-exist, in order to create the conditions necessary for the system to come into being.
This is usually where the notion of God — some external agency existing separate from space, time, and indeed from physical reality itself — comes in, because the buck seems to be required to stop somewhere.
To simply argue that God can do what nature cannot is to argue that supernatural potential for existence is somehow different from regular natural potential for existence. But this seems an arbitrary semantic distinction designed by those who have decided in advance that the supernatural must exist so they define their philosophical ideas to exclude anything but the possibility of a god.
To posit a god who could resolve this conundrum often is claimed to require that God exists outside the universe and is either timeless or eternal.
Our modern understanding of the universe provides another, and I would argue far more physical solution to this problem, however, which has some of the same features of an external creator — and moreover is logically more consistent.
I refer here to the multiverse. The possibility that our universe is one of a large, even possibly infinite set of distinct and causally separated universes, in each of which any number of fundamental aspects of physical reality may be different, opens up a vast new possibility for understanding our existence.
A multiverse of possibilities
A multiverse, either in the form of a landscape of universes existing in a host of extra dimensions, or in the form of a possibly infinitely replicating set of universes in a three dimensional space as in the case of eternal inflation, changes the playing field when we think about the creation of our own universe and the conditions that may be required for that to happen.
In the first place, the question of what determined the laws of nature that allowed our universe to form and evolve now becomes less significant. If the laws of nature are themselves stochastic and random, then there is no prescribed 'cause' for our universe. Under the general principle that anything that is not forbidden is allowed, then we would be guaranteed, in such a picture, that some universe would arise with the laws that we have discovered. No mechanism and no entity is required to fix the laws of nature to be what they are. They could be almost anything.
Since we don't currently have a fundamental theory that explains the detailed character of the landscape of a multiverse, we cannot say. (Although to be fair, to make any scientific progress in calculating possibilities, we generally assume that certain properties, like quantum mechanics permeate all possibilities. I have no idea if this notion can be usefully dispensed with, or at least I don't know of any productive work in this regard.)
In fact there may be no fundamental theory at all — although I became a physicist because I hoped there was such as theory, and because I hoped that I might one day help contribute to discovering it, this hope may be misplaced.
Nothing and something
One can carry the argument further and in a different direction. In a multiverse there could be an infinite number of regions, potentially infinitely big or infinitesimally small, in which there is simply 'nothing' and there could be regions where there is 'something'. In this case, the response to why there is something rather than nothing becomes almost trite: there is something simply because if there were nothing, we wouldn't find ourselves living there!
I recognise the frustration inherent in such a trivial response to what has seemed such a profound question throughout the ages. But science has told us that anything profound or trivial can be dramatically different from what we might suppose at first glance.
The universe is far stranger and far richer — more wonderously strange — than our meagre human imaginations can anticipate. Modern cosmology has driven us to consider ideas that could not even have been formulated a century ago. The great discoveries of the 20th and 21st centuries have not only changed the world in which we operate, they have revolutionised our understanding of the world - or worlds - that exist, or may exist, just under our noses: the reality that lies hidden until we are brave enough to search for it.
This is why philosophy and theology are ultimately incapable of addressing by themselves the truly fundamental questions that perplex us about our existence. Until we open our eyes and let nature call the shots, we are bound to wallow in myopia.
About the authorLawrence M. Krauss is a renowned cosmologist and Foundation Professor and director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University. This is an edited extract from his latest book A Universe from Nothing.
Published 23 April 2012