This question has been written about by philosophers since at least the ancient Parmenides (c. 515 BC)
The question "Why is there anything at all?", or, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" has been raised or commented on by philosophers including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Martin Heidegger – who called it the fundamental question of metaphysics.
Overview
The question is posed comprehensively, rather than concerning the existence of anything specific such as the universe or multiverse, the Big Bang, mathematical laws, physical laws, time, consciousness or God. It can be seen as an open metaphysical question.
The circled dot was used by the Pythagoreans and later Greeks to represent the first metaphysical being, the Monad or The Absolute.
On causation
Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that everything must have a cause, culminating in an ultimate uncaused cause.
David Hume
argued that, while we expect everything to have a cause because of our
experience of the necessity of causes, a cause may not be necessary in
the case of the formation of the universe, which is outside our
experience.
Bertrand Russell took a "brute fact" position when he said "I should say that the universe is just there, and that's all."
Philosopher Brian Leftow
has argued that the question cannot have a causal explanation (as any
cause must itself have a cause) or a contingent explanation (as the
factors giving the contingency must pre-exist), and that if there is an
answer it must be something that exists necessarily (i.e., something
that just exists, rather than is caused).
Explanations
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz wrote:
Why is there something rather than nothing? The sufficient reason [...] is found in a substance which [...] is a necessary being bearing the reason for its existence within itself.
Philosopher of physics Dean Rickles has argued that numbers and mathematics (or their underlying laws) may necessarily exist.
Criticism of the question
Philosopher Stephen Law
has said the question may not need answering, as it is attempting to
answer a question that is outside a spatio-temporal setting, from within
a spatio-temporal setting. He compares the question to asking "what is
north of the North Pole?" Noted philosophical wit Sidney Morgenbesser reportedly answered the question with an apothegm: "If there were nothing you'd still be complaining!", or "Even if there was nothing, you still wouldn't be satisfied!"
Physics is not enough
Physicists such as Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss have offered explanations that rely on quantum mechanics, saying that in a quantum vacuum state particles will spontaneously come into existence. Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek is credited with the aphorism that "nothing is unstable." However, this answer has not satisfied physicist Sean Carroll
who argues that Wilczek's aphorism accounts merely for the existence of
matter, but not the existence of quantum states, space-time or the
universe as a whole.
God is not enough
Philosopher
Roy Sorensen writes in the Stanford Encyclopedia that to many
philosophers the question is intrinsically impossible to answer, like squaring a circle, and even God does not sufficiently answer it:
"To explain why something exists, we standardly appeal to the existence of something else... For instance, if we answer 'There is something because the Universal Designer wanted there to be something', then our explanation takes for granted the existence of the Universal Designer. Someone who poses the question in a comprehensive way will not grant the existence of the Universal Designer as a starting point. If the explanation cannot begin with some entity, then it is hard to see how any explanation is feasible. Some philosophers conclude 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' is unanswerable. They think the question stumps us by imposing an impossible explanatory demand, namely, 'Deduce the existence of something without using any existential premises'. Logicians should feel no more ashamed of their inability to perform this deduction than geometers should feel ashamed at being unable to square the circle."
Argument that "Nothing" is impossible
The pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides was one of the first Western thinkers to question the possibility of nothing. Many other thinkers, such as Bede Rundle, have questioned whether nothing is an ontological possibility. Nothing might be a human concept that is only a construct and inappropriate for a description of a possible state, or absence of state.
