Some late night musings on a classic philosophical question, given a new spin by quantum physics...
Can something come from nothing? In a vacuum, quantum fluctuations mean that energetic particles appear and disappear from nothing. Some atheists argue that this means we don't need God to explain why the universe exists.
But even a vacuum isn't really nothing: it's like an empty bank account - no money, but it still has rules governing how things can be put in and out of it. Absolute nothing would mean not just an empty account, but no account at all.
Science may be able to describe rules that allow for "nothing" from "something" within the system of the universe; but it can't answer why there's a system and rules that permit that in the first place.
What do you think?
Quantum fluctuations - something from nothing?
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Maybe I'm tired and mis-reading it, but the article you linked doesn't address the issue of 'empty' space not actually being empty. It raises the question, then addresses a different one by saying that physical laws and facts don't count as 'something', then ends.
ReplyDeleteI need to look into this more, preferably when I'm not so sleep-deprived.
I must be tired too because I thought the article addressed your proposition that systems and rules count as 'something'. I'm in agreement with the article writer - natural laws are a description of how we see things working, not an indication of a pre-existing system that would continue to hold force even in the absence of anything else.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I threw that link in as an afterthought after coming across the idea elsewhere, which is why I didn't engage with it more directly.
ReplyDeleteBut basically, I don't agree with that article's argument that natural laws are "just descriptions of the way things work". By describing natural laws, we are describing part of the structure of reality.
Absolute nothing is virtually unthinkable, and attempting to think about it involves one in all sorts of paradoxes; in the case of absolute nothingness, "nothing exists" would not be a fact because it would have no content and describe no reality.
Quantum fluctuations do in fact take place within a pre-existing system, so are no proof that something could arise out of actual nothingness.
As it happens, I've just read a review of a book by atheist Lawrence Krauss, "A Universe from Nothing", who seems to be making the same kind of argument that Stephen Hawking made in his recent book, "The Grand Design", that the universe can appear out of "nothing". The review basically makes the same point you make, that their "nothing" is not really nothing...
ReplyDeleteJohn Lennox has critiqued Stephen Hawking's book in various places.