A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing
Lawrence M. Krauss
Free Press (January 10, 2012)
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/has-physics-made-philosophy-and-religion-obsolete/256203/Krauss:
Philosophy is a field that, unfortunately, reminds me of that old Woody Allen joke, "those that can't do, teach, and those that can't teach, teach gym." And
the worst part of philosophy is the philosophy of science; the only people, as far as I can tell, that read work by philosophers of science are other philosophers of science.
It has no impact on physics what so ever, and I doubt that other philosophers read it because it's fairly technical. And so
it's really hard to understand what justifies it. And so I'd say that this tension occurs because people in philosophy feel threatened, and they have every right to feel threatened, because science progresses and philosophy doesn't.
The
religious question "why is there something rather than nothing," has been around since people have been around, and now we're actually reaching a point where
science is beginning to
address that question.
The fact that
"nothing," namely empty space, is unstable is amazing. But I'll be the first to say that empty space as I'm describing it isn't necessarily nothing, although I will add that it was plenty good enough
for Augustine and the people who wrote the Bible. For them
an eternal empty void was the definition of nothing, and certainly
I show that that kind of nothing ain't nothing anymore.
If the multiverse really exists, then you could have an infinite object---infinite in time and space as opposed to our universe, which is finite. That may beg the question as to where the multiverse came from, but if it's infinite, it's infinite. The
multiverse could explain it by being eternal, in the same way that God explains it by being eternal, but there's a huge difference: the multiverse is well motivated and God is just an invention of lazy minds.
Alex's comment: According to Krauss, the answer to the ultimate religious question "why is there something rather than nothing" is that "nothing" does not exist. "Nothing," namely empty space, is unstable and so, sooner or later, will form energy and then matter, and then you and me. In relativistic quantum field theory, particles ("something") are just special arrangements of relativistic quantum fields pre-existing in vacuum ("nothingness").
David Albert's criticism mentioned in the article is that Krauss has not dealt with the next question: "why are there ever-existing relativistic quantum fields rather than no field at all?"
You may say that science has not solved anything, the philosophical or religious "why" question is still there. My answer is that science has brought progress because it has changed the question: from "why particles exist?" to "why fields exist?" (if Albert is right). Philosophy and religion have failed to bring such progress. Even if science cannot answer the "why" question, we have no good evidence that philosophy or religion can (albeit they attempt to).
The detrimental flaw of philosophy and religion is lack of precision. In dealing with the present topic of nothingness, for example, centuries of philosophical and religious talk has not resulted in a more precise understanding of nothingness. Only science (namely the relativistic quantum field theory) enables a more precise redefinition of nothingness from "no particles" to "no fields" (if we accept Albert's criticism).
Locked
