by James Wallace Harris, 6/29/24
Is there one question you’d love to know the answer to before you die? For me, it’s always been “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Religious people want to believe God created everything, but there’s always that one smart kid who asks: What created God? We get into the problem of infinite regression. Of course, there’s the famous story by a scientist where the punchline is: “Turtles all the way down.”
Science has been trying to answer this question forever. At the small end, we have elementary particles in the Standard Model, with scientists and mathematicians speculating they came about because of strings or other concepts. At the large scale, cosmologists think the universe might be part of a multiverse. But don’t we have the same problem? What creates strings and multiverses? It’s something tinier or larger all the way down or up.
I must assume I will never know the answer to the question that gives me the most existential angst. I used to think as a kid, when we die, we’re finally told the answer to all our questions. But if I find myself in another dimension after death, I’m just going to ask: “What created this place?”
Maybe the answer that leads to happiness is to ask questions that can be answered. To focus on a smaller domain of existence. If I reduce the domain to planet Earth, I’d ask: “What happens to humans after runaway climate change?” It’s possible to speculate with some possibilities of getting the answer close to what might happen. But is such speculation useful?
If I reduce the domain to the United States. I guess the question right now that most people are asking: “Who will be elected president in November?” Until the debate Thursday night, we assumed it would be one of two possibilities. But have things changed? Don’t things always change?
I think I need to reduce the domain again. On a very personal level I’d like to know: “What is time.” And I don’t mean where in the Earth’s rotation, or orbit about the sun. No, I want to know: “What makes reality grow from one moment to the next?” Nothing stays the same. So, what is the smallest degree of change perceptible? Is it the vibration of subatomic particles? Is it the fields and forces that make up those particles? What is one tick of reality’s clock?
This is why I’m currently reading books like The Order of Time by Carlo Ravelli and On the Origin of Time by Thomas Hertog. I struggle to understand what these books are telling me. Is it possible to understand physics without understanding mathematics and science at the graduate level? I can vaguely sense what I think they’re talking about, but I might be deluding myself.
I do think time might be the key to why there’s something and not nothing, but I’m not sure we can ever grasp the reality of spacetime. I’m certainly no Einstein or Hawking. I don’t even understand science at an eighth-grade general science teaching level. To me, comprehending time is closer to being a meditating Buddhist.
What question would you love to know the answer to?
JWH
Auxiliary Memory 
Complicated and timeless questions.
For me, Max Tegmark has given the closest thing to a satisfying suggestion as to the nature of reality in his book “Our Mathematical Universe.” The concept answers all of those basic questions for me in a remarkably satisfying way for my logical brain, if not for my emotional brain. 🙂
“Is there one question you’d love to know the answer to before you die?”
my Question would be. How did I make a difference …In the lives of people that I loved?
Like in the movie, “What a wonderful life” with Jimmy Stewart
Connell, you are wiser than I am.
I have a copy of OUR MATHEMATICAL UNIVERSE but haven’t read it. I did read his LIFE 3.0.
To be honest, I haven’t read it either 😂 , but I have listened to a couple of extensive interviews where he has discussed the concepts at a high level.
People love to ask questions about God only in the context as to whether they wanna put their faith in something they cannot see ! God would have been here every afternoon but blood was shed and after that he was never seen here again! Just his voice ! So you have to believe and have faith in order to see him on the other side! Im new to blogging letskirkit.com ! I do love your input and the blog!
Humans have imagined God in many forms. Have you ever imagined that God is the sum of everything? That the label God could be another word for reality or universe?
No to be honest with you ive seen God answer prayer ! To say that the couple of definite things ive seen happen plus testimonies would have to lead me to either accept him as being one ill use person ! or im forced to say i reject you period! once you get something or have something that doesnt fit any human experience its over
We each go with what works. I can accept what you say.
I’ve read both of those books, and they’re wonderful! Agree that most of these questions might remain unanswerable, forever—but it’s interesting to try.
Jim, I do believe you’re looking in the right place and that time is the key. And yes, it’s interesting to get clues and guidance from physicists and cosmological models: but I think you hit the nail on the head in your closing comment, “comprehending time is closer to being a meditating Buddhist.”
Personal experience is all we know and it is never anywhen else than now. What we call and feel as time is a compelling illusion that the thinking mind projects. When we experience the dragging of time, it is really tiredness from the machination of the brain, as the mind goes about its obsessive business.
The thinking mind, always wanting to solve and control, is always dissatisfied. It projects before and after, pasts and futures, virtual realities which do not exist.
Is a Universal Now any more plausible than a Universal Here? Your sister Becky, on her well-earned trip to Proxima b, will be experiencing “now”, but it is surely hers alone. You would like to be in contact her by ansible because she’s your kin and you love her, but it’s not physically possible. Unless love itself is conscious simultaneous action at a distance.
I suspect (I do not know), that only with the falling silent of the thinking mind that produces the illusion of psychological time can understanding come. But the mind is loath to relinquish its self-assumed mandate and its noise. Buddhist awakening, indeed (nice work if you can get it).
That there is something rather than nothing is surely the greatest of wonders. Let’s enjoy it while it lasts (in time…)
studying zen in the mid-nineties (circa 1995-1996), the first concept my teacher hit me with had been: TRY TO UNDERSTAND THAT YOU KNOW NOTHING,BUT DON”T LET IT GO TO YR HEAD. in other words, i reckon the message was : try to remember that you are still a blithering idiot after all is said and done. as to what difference i made in the greater scheme of things, i’m sure a number of people might say that they wre better off without me around. or as a lady named Michelle said back in 1971 (as much to herself as to me) as She gave me the right about and showed me the door, ” i should have never said hi!” i still havent got a reply to that.
I went through a Zen phase too. I don’t think I know anything in the big scheme of things. Everything I learn only teaches me that there is even more to know. Nowadays, I just try to keep up with certain brain skills just to avoid dementia.
Late here…
We will never know the answer to this question. When we ask why something, we are really saying how is there something. We want to know the math, science or mechanics behind it all. We want to know what makes a clock work, not really why there is a clock at all.
I think we have a fair view considering, of how the universe works and we assume that there will be a different sets of hows, if there are multiverses.
But the why is a whole other question and the simply answer is “because.” I suspect it’s always been..whatever it is…
Total Nothingness is a concept that simply cannot exist. So there is no “why.”
I read Thoms Herzog’s book, and really liked it a lot, though I don’t claim to fully understand it. I should get Carlo Ravelli’s too–he writes beautifully.