Review: Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story

Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In 1935, Martin Heidegger delivered a series of lectures at the University of Freiburg. In return for proclaiming his allegiance to Hitler’s national socialism, Heidegger, arguably the most influential of 20th century philosophers, was given the job and title of rector at the University of Freiburg. As he commenced his lectures, Heidegger declared “Why is there being rather than nothing at all” to be the deepest, the most far-reaching and most fundamental of all questions. Indeed, ever since Leibniz first posed the question of ‘why is there something rather than nothing’ in the early 18th century, philosophers, theologians and physicists have expended much intellectual energy in thinking about the question and possible solutions to it. In ‘Why Does the World Exist’, Jim Holt sets out on a personal philosophical quest to explore the various scientific and philosophical theories that have been advanced in recent years in an attempt to penetrate the enigma of existence. Holt’s quest makes for a tremendously exciting and rewarding read: profound yet humorous, erudite and yet accessible, Holt’s work is a veritable tour de force of philosophical and scientific writing.

The book is structured around interviews and conversations with the following eight thinkers: David Deutsch, Adolf Grünbaum, John Leslie, Derek Parfit, Roger Penrose, Richard Swinburne, Steven Weinberg and John Updike. Holt’s interviews with these thinkers and reflections more generally on contemporary debates in cosmology and philosophy makes clear that there remains profound intellectual disagreement regarding the question of the universe’s origin and the purpose of its existence. The philosopher Robert Nozick suggested that anybody who proposed a non-strange answer to the question of ‘why something exists rather than nothing’ shows that he or she doesn’t understand the question. Nozick had a point and it is worth reflecting on some of the theories that Holt’s interlocutors have proposed by way of an explanation of the origins of the universe. Before we do, it is worth reflecting, if only very briefly, on why it is that Leibniz’s question, as he initially formulated it, provokes such existential angst among thinkers.

Leibniz’s question of ‘why is there something rather than nothing’ derives its force from a seemingly obvious fact about the world and the objects that populate it. The world and the objects in it strike us as being contingent. That is to say, it is entirely coherent that the world or any object within it might not have existed. Mahatma Gandhi existed; but it is entirely possible that he might not have existed. Indeed, if his parents had not engaged in sexual congress, India would not have had a Gandhi to shepherd the country through its movement for independence. Reflect on the world around you and you will notice the frighteningly fragile grip that things have on existence; things come into existence and go out of existence and therefore, Leibniz argues, it makes sense to ask why it is that the world exists, especially because its non-existence seems simpler. This last point is not with controversy. The suggestion that non-existence is simpler derives from what Robert Nozick called ‘the presumption in favour of nothingness’. The argument is that worlds that contain things pose explanatory questions that are not posed by ‘empty’ worlds (that is, words containing nothing). Given the presumption of nothingness, the existence of the actual world cries out for explanation. Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason holds that there must be an explanation for every fact, an answer for every question. What then can be explanation for the world? Importantly, Leibniz argues that the existence of contingent entities (and the world is such an entity) can be explained only by appeal to a necessary being. A necessary being is an entity whose existence is not contingent. Leibniz argues that God is such an entity because he contains within himself the reason for his own existence. Leibniz’s response to the question of ‘why is there something rather than nothing’ is therefore clear and decisive: the world exists because of God; only God can furnish the ultimate resolution to the mystery and enigma of existence.

This Leibnizian resolution to the mystery of existence has been subject to philosophical attack from all quarters. Most have sought to challenge the ontological coherence of ‘necessary beings’. One thinker who also reasons from the apparent contingency of the world to God but who adopts a somewhat different approach to that of Leibniz in getting there is Richard Swinburne. Swinburne also views God as the terminus of the explanatory chain and considers that one cannot go beyond God in the quest to resolve the mystery of existence. However, Swinburne does not believe in the Principle of Sufficient Reason; he considers that there does not need to be an explanation for everything (this allows him to avoid the question of why God exists). Swinburne, in contrast to many contemporary philosophical theists, does not believe that God’s existence is logically necessary. The important point for Swinburne is that God’s simplicity renders him the most likely and probable cause of the world. For Swinburne, God’s existence is just a ‘brute fact’ and there is no point in asking why it is that God exists.

Holt’s fifth chapter deals with what he describes as the ‘hotly contested’ issue of the world’s temporal nature: is the world finite or infinite? In the thirteenth century,up the Catholic Church declared it to be an article of faith that the world had a beginning in time. This of course was many centuries before scientists discovered evidence of the so-called Big Bang and so it is worth asking why the Catholic Church committed itself to such a position even though Aquinas, ever the loyal Aristotelian, insisted that the point could never be proved philosophically. Of course, the account of Genesis has been read by many Christians as suggesting that the world was created at a point in time and therefore is not eternal. Additionally, some theologians, including Aquinas’ contemporary St. Bonaventure, argued that the universe could not have an infinite past. Bonaventure considered that the eternality of the universe was logically impossible. This argument has been developed by the contemporary Christian philosopher of religion, William Lane Craig. Craig argues that the universe must have had a beginning and that this conclusion is supported on both philosophical and scientific grounds. Let’s consider his argument from philosophy. Craig argues that the notion of an actual infinity does not make any logical sense and that there could be no such thing in the real world. Following al-Ghazali, Craig argues that if past time were infinite then Saturn and Jupiter would have completed the same number of revolutions. But, Saturn and Jupiter obviously wouldn’t complete the same number of revolutions in any given period of time for Jupiter completes a revolution in twelve years whereas it takes Saturn thirty years to complete a revolution. On this basis, past time cannot be infinite.

Holt suggests that there is nothing absurd about an infinite past and points to the examples of Galileo, Newton and Einstein, all of whom had no problem conceiving of the universe as being infinite in time. Even the Big Bang, Holt argues, may not necessarily be evidence of the finite nature of the past. Holt argues that the current theory that best explains the Big Bang is called the ‘new inflationary cosmology’. The theory predicts that the universe-engendering explosions like the Big Bang should be a fairly routine occurrence and that our universe is likely to have emerged from the space-time of a pre-existing universe. Our universe then is just an infinitesimal part of an ever-reproducing multiverse. Although each of the bubble universes within this multiverse had a definite beginning in time, the entire self-replicating ensemble may be infinitely old.

One of the most interesting chapters of the book includes Holt’s interview with the speculative cosmologist, John Leslie. Leslie’s solution to the mystery of existence is distinctly Platonic in nature and holds that reality is ruled by abstract value. Following Plato, Leslie believes that the ethical requirement that a good universe exist was itself enough to create the universe. In Plato’s Republic, the Form of the Good is said to ‘bestow existence upon things’. Leslie’s view requires belief in goodness as an objective value (i.e. that there are facts about what is good and evil and that these facts are timelessly and necessarily true, independent of human concerns). More controversially, Leslie’s account requires that we believe that the ethical needs that arise from such facts about goodness can be creatively effective – that they can bring things into existence. It is this claim that most would reject as too implausible. How, Holt writes, could objective truths about goodness summon up a world out of sheer nothingness?




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Review: Nation as Mother: And Other Visions of Nationhood

Nation as Mother: And Other Visions of Nationhood by Sugata Bose
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There is much of value in Sugata Bose’s latest book, ‘The Nation as Mother’. The book comprises an assortment of essays, all of which focus, some more tangentially than others, on the theme of nationalism and the formation of the nation-state. The book’s title comes from the defining chapter of the volume in which Bose interrogates ‘the sacred biography of the Mother’ - the provenance and history of the maternal metaphor in India’s national consciousness. The metaphor of ‘nation as mother’ was formed in the intellectually fertile terrain of Bengal and inspired creativity in provincial and nation-wide expressions of nationalisms through a litany of art forms including literature, poetry, music and painting. Bose’s incisive narrative brings to light the historical and enduring unease that Indian Muslims have had with the maternal symbol and its overtly religious symbolism and use. Bose’s fascinating study of Aurobindo sheds light on the latter’s political and religious philosophy and represents a much-needed corrective against recent attempts by secularist historians to paint Aurobindo in communal and sectarian colors. Throughout his volume, Bose cautions against the seemingly dominant tendency of viewing Indian nationalist thought through the prism of European discourse. Treating the former as derivative of the latter has resulted, Bose argues, in a vacuum of native subjectivity. In seeking to rescue Indian intellectual history from its impoverished state, Bose invites readers to consider the extent to which modern Indian nationalism drew significantly on rich legacies of precolonial regional patriotisms, kept alive through a ‘constant process of creative innovation’. In many respects, Bose would have done well here to engage more robustly with the recent work of Ananya Vajpeyi who does more than Bose to demonstrate how the creative engagement with precolonial patriotisms shaped and informed colonial and post-colonial Indian nationalisms. That said, Bose’s analysis reminds us that Indian history provides for a rich diversity of nationalisms and that there is nothing particularly indigenous or inevitable about the oppressive, parochial and exclusionary-based nationalism that informs India’s contemporary political discourse. Bose argues, correctly in my view, that our national project today should be about recovering a more generously formed vision of national belonging and patriotism that does, among other things, justice to the spirit of cosmopolitanism that permeates the writings of thinkers that Tagore and Aurobindo.

Several of the essays in the volume deal with Partition. Bose attributes significant responsibility to the Congress Party and its commitment to a “monolithic concept of sovereignty borrowed for modern Europe” for the eventual dismemberment of India. Bose argues that the Congress Party’s lust for power denied the multiple identities and several-layered sovereignties that had characterized India’s pre-colonial past. Bose’s criticism of the Congress Party’s (and the Hindu Mahasabha’s) role in bringing about Partition must be seen in light of his Bose’s treatment of Jinnah’s culpability and role regarding the same. Bose’s account of Jinnah (and of the Congress Party) is consistent with Professor Ayesha Jalal’s thesis (Sugata Bose is married to Ayesha Jalal) which holds that Jinnah’s demand for Pakistan was merely a bargaining chip to be used against the Congress with the aim of securing a more federated post-colonial India. While scholarship in this area remains (to some degree) in a state of flux, recent scholarship does more than enough to undermine Jalal’s central claims. For example, in reviewing Venkat Dhulipala’s 2015 book, ‘Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam and the Quest for Pakistan in Colonial North India’, Pratap Bhanu Mehta wrote that the book ‘decisively demolishes Ayesha Jalal’s idea that Pakistan arose in a fit of ideological absentmindedness, a stratagem in a bargaining game gone awry.’ Dhulipala’s book convincingly argues that the idea of Pakistan, an Islamic state that is both a homeland for Muslims and the vehicle for regeneration in Islam, had deep roots in political, theological and literary debates (in other words, giving lie to the oft-quoted assertion that Pakistan’s problem was that it was ‘insufficiently imagined’). The final section of the book contains a transcribed selection of Bose’s Lok Sabha speeches. Commenting on the controversy over Jaswant Singh’s eulogistic portrayal of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Bose writes that ‘majoritanism, whether in secular or saffron garb, continues to be a potential threat to Indian democracy. Regional rights were once thought to be a counterpoise to the anti-democratic tendencies of an over-centralized state. Regional parties run by petty and insecure dictators are proving to be as ruthless as the all-India parties in the suppression of internal dissent’. I wonder who Bose had in mind when he wrote these words; isn’t it ironic how this would strike most readers as a particularly apt description of his own party, the Trinamool Congress and his party leader, Mamata Bannerjee.


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