by Jim Holt
A few minutes later, Lévi-Strauss is asked to give a little speech to the party. He talks extemporaneously, without notes, in a slow, stately voice.
“Montaigne,” he begins, “said that aging diminishes us each day in a way that, when death finally arrives, it takes away only a quarter or half the man. But Montaigne only lived to be fifty-nine, so he could have no idea of the extreme old age I find myself in today”—which, he adds, was one of the “most curious surprises of my existence.” He says he feels like a “shattered hologram” that has lost its unity but that still retains an image of the whole self.
This is not the speech we were expecting. It is intimate, it is about death.
Lévi-Strauss goes on to talk about the “dialogue” between the eroded self he has become—le moi réel—and the ideal self that coexists with it—le moi métonymique. The latter, planning ambitious new intellectual projects, says to the former, “You must continue.” But the former replies, “That’s your business—only you can see things whole.” Lévi-Strauss then thanks those of us assembled for helping him silence this futile dialogue and allowing his two selves to “coincide” again for a moment—“although,” he adds, “I am well aware that le moi réel will continue to sink toward its ultimate dissolution.”
AFTER THE PARTY I leave the Collège de France and go out into the drizzly Paris night. I walk down the rue des Écoles to the Brasserie Balzar, where I have a nice plate of choucroute and drink the better part of a bottle of Saint-Émilion. Then I head back to my apartment and turn on the TV.
There is a book-chat show in progress, hosted by the familiar French television figure Bernard Pivot. His guests tonight are a Dominican priest, a theoretical physicist, and a Buddhist monk. And they are all grappling with a deep metaphysical question, one that was originally posed three centuries ago by Leibniz: Pourquoi y-a-t-il quelque chose plutôt que rien? Why is there Something rather than Nothing?
Each of the guests has a different way of answering this question. The priest, a handsome but unsmiling young man wearing severe wire-frame spectacles and attired in a hooded Dominican habit of pure white, argues that reality had to have had a divine origin. Just as each of us came into existence through an act of our parents, the priest says, so the universe must have come into existence through an act of a creator. Au fond de la question est une cause première—Dieu. He adds that God was not the first cause in a temporal sense, since God created time itself. God was behind the Big Bang, but not prior to it.
The physicist is an older fellow with a thick head of white hair, wearing a light-blue sport coat and an improbable Western-style string tie. He is grumpily impatient with all this supernatural nonsense. The existence of the universe is purely a matter of chance quantum fluctuations, he says. Just as a particle and its antiparticle can spontaneously arise out of a vacuum, so too can the seed for an entire universe. So quantum theory accounts for why there is something rather than nothing. Nôtre univers est venu par hasard d’une fluctuation quantique du vide. Our universe arose by chance from a quantum fluctuation in the void. And that’s the end of it.
The monk, attired in crimson and saffron robes, with bare shoulders and a freshly shaved head, has the most interesting line on the question. He also has the most pleasant demeanor. In contrast to the prim-mouthed young priest and the irritable old physicist, the monk beams happiness. A smile continuously plays about his lips. As a Buddhist, he says, he believes that the universe had no beginning. Il n’y a pas de début. Nothingness—le néant—could never give way to being, he says, because it is defined in opposition to that which exists. A billion causes could not make a universe come into existence out of what does not exist. That is why, the monk says, the Buddhist doctrine of a beginning-less universe makes the most metaphysical sense. C’est encore plus simple.
Vous trouvez? interjects Bernard Pivot, eyebrow arched.
The Buddhist monk genially protests that he is not evading the question of origins. Rather, he is using it to explore the nature of reality. What is the universe, after all? Ce n’est pas bien sûr le néant. It is not nothingness. Yet it is something very close: an emptiness—une vacuité. Things don’t really have the solidity we attribute to them. The world is like a dream, an illusion. But in our thinking, we transform its fluidity into something fixed and solid-seeming. This engenders le désir, l’orgueil, la jalousie. Buddhism, by correcting our metaphysical error, thus has a therapeutic purpose. It offers un chemin vers l’éveil—a path to enlightenment. And it also resolves the mystery of being. When Leibniz asked, Pourquoi quelque chose plutôt que rien? his question presupposed that something really and truly exists. And that’s an illusion.
Ah oui? says Pivot, again skeptically arching an eyebrow.
Oui! replies the monk, smiling radiantly.
I SWITCH OFF the TV and go out into the chill Paris night for a stroll and a smoke. Leaving my building, I turn toward the Seine, a short block away. Just across the water looms the back of Nôtre Dame, with its flying buttresses. I walk along the quay downriver for a bit, until I get to the Pont des Arts—my favorite bridge, since it has no traffic and is thus (aside from the buskers) quiet. I go halfway across the bridge, where I pause to light a cigarette and take in the view of Paris at midnight.
Before me stretches a gorgeously illumined patch of the great vacuité that the Buddhist monk had spoken of. Is it really an insubstantial dream, an empty illusion? Is it gross and viscous and absurd, as Sartre held, or is it a divine gift, as that Dominican priest was just saying? Or could the whole thing just be an inexplicable quantum fluke?
This pourquoi quelque chose plutôt que rien business, I think to myself, it’s really awfully mysterious. Worth looking into further. Maybe I should write a book about it some day.
I flick my cigarette butt into the dark waters flowing below and head home.
Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from
nowhere to nothing.
—AMBROSE BIERCE, The Devil’s Dictionary
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to Adolph Grünbaum, Richard Swinburne, David Deutsch, Andre Linde, Alex Vilenkin, Steven Weinberg, Roger Penrose, John Leslie, Derek Parfit, and the late John Updike, all of whom were kind enough to share their time and thoughts with me. Among those with whom I did not speak directly, it should be obvious that I owe the most to Thomas Nagel, a philosopher I have always revered for his originality, depth, and integrity.
I am also grateful to Samuel Scheffler, whose 2010 seminar on the metaphysics of death I was privileged to attend; to my philosophical confidants Anthony Gottlieb, Ned Block, Paul Boghossian, and Jonathan Adler; to my witty and industrious intern, Jimmy O’Higgins; to my agent, Chris Calhoun; and to my editor, Bob Weil, and his adjutant, Philip Marino.
Among my regrets, the greatest is that Christopher Hitchens is no longer around to argue over the book. When I asked him for a blurb, he wrote back from the cancer center in Houston where he was undergoing last-chance treatment, “Sling it over . . . I’d be proud.” Ten days later he was dead.
Finally, for helping me stave off cosmic torpor, thanks to Jared, Malcolm, Jenny, and, most of all, Jon.
Notes
1. Confronting the Mystery
5 “Time and again”: Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006), p. 184.
5 “Maybe the ‘inflation’ ”: Dawkins, God Delusion, p. 185.
5 “What is it that breathes”: Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (Bantam Books, 1998), p. 190.
6 “No scientific theory”: Henry Margenau and Roy Abraham Varghese, Cosmos, Bios, Theos (Open Court, 1992), p. 11.
7 “would have no stability”: Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 168.
9 “a prejudice as deep-rooted”: Nicholas Rescher, The Riddle of Existence (University Press of America, 1994), p. 17.
10 “Is it not probable”: David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Hafner, 1948), p.
60.
12 “All of us”: William James, Some Problems of Philosophy (Longmans, Green, 1911), p. 46.
2. Philosophical Tour d’Horizon
17 “the darkest in all”: James, Some Problems of Philosophy, p. 46.
17 “tear the individual’s”: A. C. B. Lovell, The Individual and the Universe (Mentor, 1961), p. 125.
17 “constitutes one of”: Lovejoy, Great Chain of Being, p. 329.
17 “grazed by its hidden power”: Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics (Yale University Press, 1959), p. 1.
18 “The lower a man”: Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (Dover, 1966), vol. 2, p. 161.
19 “It has always”: John Colapinto, “The Interpreter,” The New Yorker, April 16, 2007, p. 125.
20 “This principle having”: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters, ed. Leroy E. Loemker (University of Chicago Press, 1956), vol. 2, p. 1038.
21 “Whatever we can”: Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, p. 58.
22 “the balance wheel”: Schopenhauer, World as Will, p. 171.
22 “fools”: Ibid., p. 185.
22 “the main function”: Friedrich Schelling, quoted in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich (Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 800.
22 “the vanishing of being”: G. F. W. Hegel, The Logic of Hegel, trans. William Wallace (Clarendon Press, 1892), p. 167.
22 “spice-seller’s explanations”: Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie (Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 104.
22 “I want to know”: Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. A. Mitchell (Modern Library, 1944), pp. 299–301.
22 “deepest”: Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 2.
23 “being able to ask”: Ibid., p. 206.
23 “Aesthetically, the miracle”: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 1914–1916, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Harper Torchbook, 1969), p. 86.
24 “the ultimate ontological”: Quoted in A. J. Ayer, The Meaning of Life (Scribner, 1990), p. 23.
24 “Supposing”: A. J. Ayer, The Meaning of Life (Scribner, 1990), p. 24.
24 “incredibly shallow”: Quoted in Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein (Free Press, 1990), p. 543.
25 “I should say”: Quoted in John Hick, The Existence of God (Collier, 1964), p. 175.
25 “to that primordial”: Address of Pope Pius XII to the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences, November 22, 1951.
25 “scientists who effectively”: Quoted in F. David Peat, Infinite Potential (Perseus, 1996), p. 145.
25 “Some younger scientists”: Quoted in Hans Küng, Credo (Doubleday, 1993), p. 17.
25 “the notion of a beginning” Quoted in Helge Kragh, Cosmology and Controversy (Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 46.
25 “a party girl”: quoted in Jane Gregory, Fred Hoyle’s Universe (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 39.
27 “If the universe”: Quoted in Margenau and Varghese, Cosmos, Bios, Theos, p. 5.
28 “sucking things into”: Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 123.
28 “Someone who proposes”: Ibid., p. 116.
29 “in philosophy”: Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, trans. D. J. Enright et al. (Modern Library, 2003), vol. 3, p. 325.
29 “were asking one”: Timothy Williamson, in Proceedings of the 2004 St. Andrews Conference on Realism and Truth, ed. P. Greenough and M. Lynch (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
30 “from nothing to”: James, Some Problems of Philosophy, p. 40.
31 “philosophy, like the overture”: Schopenhauer, World as Will, p. 171.
31 “When you have understood”: Quoted in John Updike, Hugging the Shore (Vintage Books, 1984), p. 601.
31 “choked with rage”: Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, trans. Lloyd Alexander (New Directions, 1964), p. 134.
32 “a vacuum is a hell”: Quoted in John D. Barrow, New Theories of Everything (Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 93.
32 “looked around the ring”: John Updike, Bech (Fawcett, 1965), p. 131.
32 “He believed, if”: Ibid., p. 175.
34 “I believe in Spinoza’s”: Quoted in Einstein for the 21st Century, ed. Peter Galison et al. (Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 37.
35 “I see it”: Quoted in Joseph W. Dauben, Georg Cantor (Harvard University Press, 1979), p. 55.
35 “He who has not”: Quoted in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (Macmillan, 1967) vol. 8, p. 302.
Interlude: The Arithmetic of Nothingness
39 “Opposites”: P. W. Atkins, The Creation (W. H. Freeman, 1981), p. 111.
40 “a little speck of”: David K. Lewis, Parts of Classes (Blackwell, 1991), p. 13.
3. A Brief History of Nothing
41 “nothing (n.)”: Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, ed. David B. Guralnik (William Collins, 1976), p. 973.
41 “simpler and easier”: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters, ed. Leroy E. Loemker (University of Chicago Press, 1956), vol. 2, p. 1038.
42 “The less anything is”: The Works of John Donne, vol. 6, ed. Henry Alford (John W. Parker, 1839), p. 155.
42 “that which God”: Quoted in John Updike, Picked-Up Pieces (Fawcett, 1966), p. 97.
43 “Nothingness haunts being”: Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (Philosophical Library, 1956), p. 11.
43 “fullness of being”: Ibid., p. 9.
43 “Anxiety reveals”: Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (HarperCollins, 1993), p. 101.
43 “Nothing is neither”: Quoted in John Passmore, One Hundred Years of Philosophy (Penguin, 1968), p. 477.
44 “a vacuum force”: Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, p. 123.
44 “By the time”: Myles Burnyeat, review of Nozick’s Philosophical Explanations, Times Literary Supplement, October 15, 1982, p. 1136.
44 “venerable and awesome”: Plato, Theaetetus, 183e, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton et al. (Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 888.
46 “There is just”: Bede Rundle, Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing (Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 113.
46 “an embroidery on”: Bergson, Creative Evolution, p 278.
47 “In order for me”: A. Luria, The Mind of a Mnemonist (Avon, 1969), pp. 131–132.
49 “Our attempt to”: Rundle, Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing, p. 116.
49 “Space is not”: Ibid., p. 111.
58 “strictly meaningless”: Milton K. Munitz, The Mystery of Existence (New York University Press, 1974), p. 149.
58 “strictly a technical convenience”: W. V. O. Quine, Philosophy of Logic (Prentice-Hall, 1970), p. 53.
59 “a triumph of triviality”: Ibid., p. 54.
61 “Among the great things”: Quoted in Michael J. Gelb, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci (Delacorte Press, 1998), p. 25.
4. The Great Rejectionist
63 “If there is”: Jim Holt, review of Dawkins’s The God Delusion, New York Times Book Review, October 22, 2006, p. 1.
68 “collapse into non-existence”: Quoted in A Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. Antony Flew (St. Martin’s Press, 1984), p. 80.
71 “Absolute, true”: Sir Isaac Newton, “Scholium on Absolute Space and Time,” in Time, ed. Jonathan Westphal et al. (Hackett Publishing Co., 1993), p. 37.
72 “profoundest”: J. J. C. Smart, Our Place in the Universe (Blackwell, 1989), p. 178.
76 “the truth always”: Richard Feynman, The Character of a Physical Law (MIT Press, 1967), p. 171.
76 Suppose you have two equally well-confirmed theories: The example is due to Richard Swinburne.
77 “part of what we mean”: Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory (Pantheon Books, 1993), p. 149.
77 “any God capable”: Dawkins, God Delusion, p. 176.
<
br /> 5. Finite or Infinite?
85 “How can anything”: David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, p. 59.
Interlude: Night Thoughts at the Café de Flore
90 “His movement is”: Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 59.
92 “The very same criteria”: Richard Swinburne, Is There a God? (Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 2.
93 “Why, oh why”: Adolf Grünbaum, “Rejoinder to Richard Swinburne’s ‘Second Reply to Grünbaum,’ ” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, vol. 56 (2005), p. 930.
93 “a breathtaking piece”: Dawkins, God Delusion, p. 148.
93 “beyond satire”: Ibid., p. 64.
93 “May you rot”: Quoted in ibid., p. 89.
6. The Inductive Theist of North Oxford
99 in a 1989 essay: Richard Swinburne, “Argument from the Fine-Tuning of the Universe,” in Physical Cosmology and Philosophy, ed. John Leslie (Macmillan, 1990), p. 158.
106 “vastly improbable”: Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 151.
Interlude: The Supreme Brute Fact
111 “So truly, therefore”: Saint Anselm, “Proslogion,” in The Ontological Argument, ed. Alvin Plantinga (Anchor Books, 1965), p. 5.
111 “a charming joke”: Arthur Schopenhauer, “The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason,” in Ontological Argument, p. 66.
111 “I remember the precise”: The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, ed. Robert E. Egner et al. (Touchstone, 1961), p. 42.
111 “it is easier”: Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (Touchstone, 1972), p. 586.