A philosophical meditation on existence.
By Chudi Okoye
The question of why our universe (and possibly other universes) came into existence, specifically why there is something rather than nothing, has preoccupied theologians, philosophers, scientists, and even lay people like me for centuries. As the German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz famously noted, nothing is simpler than something, which makes this inquiry all the more profound.
To clarify, I use the term ‘nothing’ in a strict metaphysical sense to mean the absence of matter, energy, space, time, laws, properties, or even potential for existence—a pure state of non-being, the absolute negation of ‘something.’ In contrast, ‘something’ encompasses anything that exists or has being, whether tangible or intangible, physical or abstract. It includes matter, energy, ideas, laws, entities, or phenomena that can be identified, experienced, or conceived, and it is the opposite of ‘nothing,’ encompassing all that can be said to “be” without presupposing any specific source or grounding for that existence.
I will commence this brief discussion of how thinkers down the ages have tackled the problem of why ‘nothing’ supposedly became ‘something’ by acknowledging that some thinkers in fact deny objective existence. Prominent among these: the Irish philosopher George Berkeley, who argued in an early 18th century treatise that “to be is to be perceived” (in Latin, esse est percipi)—which means that objects exist only insofar as they are perceived by a mind; and René Descartes, who doubted the existence of the external world, concluding with his famous ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ (‘I think, therefore I am’). Immanuel Kant, meanwhile, suggested that human perception is limited to ‘phenomena’—the world as it appears to us—while the true essence of things, the ‘noumena,’ remains inaccessible (more on this later). Other traditions, such as Madhyamaka Buddhism, also challenge the permanence and inherent existence of things, arguing that all phenomena are empty of inherent self-existence.
A more recent objection comes from Markus Gabriel, who, in his book Why the World Does Not Exist, argues that the concept of ‘the world’ as an all-encompassing totality is incoherent. Gabriel contends that reality consists of distinct ‘fields of sense,’ each with its own objects, facts, and contexts—be it in science, politics, or art. He thus rejects the very idea of a unified ‘world.’ This is part of his broader push for a ‘new realism’ that embraces the plurality of existence.
Still, despite these counter-intuitive contentions, the majority of thinkers believe there is something rather than nothing. And in this brief essay (very brief, considering the subject), I plan to explore how a few of them have attempted to explain phenomena.
There are some, like the English philosopher Stephen Law of the University of Oxford, who argue against the wisdom of attempting to answer this question at all. Prof. Law contends that this requires humans to step outside their “spacio-temporal” setting to imagine what could have triggered ‘nothing’ to become the ‘something’ that is our universe—a task he considers impossible. It is a position you might find too in Kant, who argued that such a question is beyond human comprehension, as human reason is limited to phenomena (objects of experience, or how things appear to us, including external objects, physical processes, and internal objects like feelings), not what he called noumena (“things-in-themselves” or reality that exists independently of our experience and are not directly accessible to us).
The British cosmologist, Martin Rees, agrees with this position, in one interview invoking the popular statement with which the late Austrian philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, ends his book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
The objection to this question goes even further back, to the 5th century BC Greek philosopher Parmenides, who argued that the very idea of ‘nothing’ is a logical impossibility. For Parmenides, the concept of ‘nothingness’ is incoherent because ‘what is not’ cannot be thought or spoken of—after all, to speak or think of ‘nothing’ is to grant it a kind of existence, which contradicts its definition. Parmenides posited that only ‘Being’ truly exists, and that this Being is eternal, uncreated, and indivisible. Parmenides’ radical view challenged the common understanding of reality as composed of change and plurality. Instead, he argued that change and diversity are illusions, products of human perception rather than truths about reality. This idea influenced later philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, and it laid the foundation for metaphysical debates about the nature of existence and non-existence.
Aristotle himself considered the universe to be eternal; yet he rather confusingly (to me anyway) propounded the construct of an “Unmoved Mover,” which he developed to avoid an infinite regress in explaining the origin of motion in the universe. While Aristotle’s concept was primarily concerned with the eternal continuity of motion rather than the temporal origin of the universe, it raises an intriguing question: If the universe is eternal, with no beginning or end, why is there a need for a prime mover at all? Does the concept of the “Unmoved Mover” merely explain the perpetuation of motion, or does it have deeper implications for the origin of the universe itself, which Aristotle might not have intended? I think the latter.
There is, of course, the argument from theistic creation, familiar to all who adhere to one religion or another. St. Augustine, for instance, famously argued that God created the universe ex nihilo (out of nothing). For Augustine, this act of creation was not a process in time but the very beginning of time itself—he claimed that time was created along with the universe, making it meaningless to ask what ‘preceded’ creation. In doing so, Augustine anticipated modern scientific notions of “spacetime,” as in Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, where time is intertwined with the fabric of the universe. However, I would argue that Augustine’s position raises a deeper question he does not fully address, namely: Why did God create the universe at all? Also, if God created the universe from a pre-existing nothing, as Augustine insists, does this imply that God was part of that nothing, or—God forbid!—that God was Himself nothing before creation? This is of course preposterous, but it is not an illogical interrogation of Augustine. For Augustine, creation was an act of divine freedom and love, not necessity, but this leaves unresolved the metaphysical conundrum of why a self-sufficient God would choose to create at all.
Gottfried Leibniz, mentioned earlier, who famously posed the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?”, argued that this universe exists because it is the “best of all possible worlds”—a creation according to divine wisdom and reason. However, I believe this answer addresses a different question than the one Leibniz posed: Why do we have this specific universe? Leibniz’s claim that this is the best possible world explains the particular nature of our universe, but it does not explain why there is something in existence at all, rather than nothing. Leibniz invokes the principle of sufficient reason—the idea that everything must have a reason or cause—and he attributes the creation of the universe to God as a “necessary being,” not unlike Augustine and other theistic philosophers. However, Leibniz does not address the deeper question of why a “necessary being” like God exists in the first place, or why God would create anything.
There are some later thinkers, including David Hume, Bertrand Russell, and Derek Parfit, who apply the so-called ‘brute fact’ logic to the question, asserting that the universe simply exists, and that there is no need to explain why it does. This view differs from denying the possibility of humans meaningfully contemplating the question of why there is something rather than nothing, as it acknowledges the question but claims that it lacks any further explanation.
Despite the ‘brute fact’ argument, modern physicists like Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss have attempted to provide non-theistic answers to the question. Hawking, for instance, suggested that the universe could arise spontaneously from the laws of quantum mechanics. In his co-authored book, The Grand Design, he famously stated: “Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.” Similarly, Krauss, in A Universe from Nothing, argues that quantum fluctuations in a vacuum could spontaneously generate universes, without the need for a creator. However, critics have noted that ‘nothing’ in Krauss’ theory is not pure non-existence, as traditionally conceived in philosophy, but rather a quantum vacuum with inherent physical properties. Furthermore, critics claim, Krauss does not address the question of where these physical properties in the vacuum come from.
While Krauss and others have proposed the quantum fields argument for the spontaneous emergence of something from nothing, an actual mathematical demonstration of this was provided by a trio of Chinese quantum cosmologists in a 2014 paper. The paper, titled “Spontaneous Creation of the Universe from Nothing” and written by Dongshan He, Dongfeng Gao, and Qing-yu Cai of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, argues that the universe could emerge spontaneously from “nothing,” which the authors define as the absence of matter, space, and time, through the principles of quantum mechanics. Using the Wheeler-DeWitt equation (which frankly I myself found a little difficult to understand), the authors describe how quantum fluctuations can generate a “true vacuum bubble” that expands exponentially, driven by a quantum potential similar to the cosmological constant (that is, the force said by physicists to drive the accelerated expansion of the universe). This process, according to the paper, provides a scientific framework for the universe’s inflationary dynamics and avoids singularities (that is, points of infinite density, such as those predicted in black holes or the Big Bang).
It turns out, however, as with Lawrence Krauss, that the ‘nothing’ propounded in this paper is not absolute; it presupposes the existence of quantum laws and potentials. So, although Krauss and others propose quantum fields as a mechanism for the spontaneous emergence of the universe, their concept of ‘nothing’ is not absolute non-existence. It presupposes a quantum vacuum with physical properties. This leaves unanswered the deeper metaphysical question of why there are quantum laws or why there is anything at all, instead of absolute nothingness.
Modern cosmology has also grappled with the question of whether the universe’s total energy can provide insight into its origin. Some physicists, such as Krauss and Alan Guth, have proposed the zero-energy universe hypothesis, which suggests that the universe’s positive energy (from matter and radiation) and negative energy (from gravitational potential) perfectly cancel out, resulting in a net total energy of zero. This hypothesis aligns with the idea that the universe could arise spontaneously from “nothing” without violating conservation laws. However, even if the universe’s total energy is zero, this does not resolve the deeper metaphysical question of why such a balance exists or why the laws permitting this spontaneous emergence are themselves in place. While this hypothesis offers a fascinating scientific explanation for how the universe might have emerged, it still leaves unanswered the ultimate “why” of existence—why there is something rather than nothing.
The question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” remains one of the most profound and unresolved mysteries in human thought. Despite millennia of exploration by philosophers, scientists, and theologians, no universally accepted answer has emerged. Philosophy illuminates the question’s depth and offers deeply reflective answers, but these are fragmented and often substitute one mystery for another. Science, for its part, excels in describing the mechanisms of existence, offering powerful insights. Cosmological models like the Big Bang theory describe how our universe emerged and evolved. Yet they often assume pre-existing laws, leaving unanswered the question of ultimate origin. The notion of quantum creation, proposed by physicists like Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss, seems to offer credible answers. However, the ‘nothing’ in such propositions includes quantum fields and physical laws, which are something rather than nothing. So science offers an as yet incomplete explanation. This permits the persistence of theological explanations. But these merely provide existential comfort and moral meaning; they do not empirically resolve the metaphysical problem of why something presumably emerged from nothing.
The question remains unresolved for several reasons: it may be beyond the limits of human cognition: if existence is rooted in a transcendent principle or entity, it might lie beyond our capacity to comprehend; or it may be that there’s nothing like nothing—as some argue, existence is the default and there’s no plausible alternative to it; or it may in fact be that we aren’t framing the question properly—our inability to conclusively answer this question may be simply due to linguistic confusion rather than metaphysical complexity.
This persistent uncertainty surrounding the question of why there is something rather than nothing is precisely why I find my position of agnostic theism—firm belief in God; uncertainty about God’s attributes or role in nature—to be both intellectually honest and philosophically coherent. It embraces the limits of human knowledge while remaining open to the possibility of a transcendent reality. It is a view about which I hope to write more fully at a later time.
