“Why is there something rather than nothing?” This classic philosophical question was put to me by one of my students when I emailed them all asking what topics they hoped to discuss in our class.
“It’s an interesting question,” I emailed the student. “Let me ask you a question, though. How does it feel asking that question?”
In pedagogical circles we call this meta-cognition.
“Does it provoke anxiety? What kind of answer do you hope for? What kind of answer would disappoint you?”
People have been asking the “something rather than nothing” question for a long time. In the Medieval period—roughly the fall of Rome to the end of the bubonic plague (476 CE - 1350 CE)—philosophers who were devoted to reconciling Christianity with Aristotle (384 BCE - 322 BCE) asked this question in the free time they had from asking how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.
They were made anxious by the question. There had to be a reason why there was something rather than nothing, otherwise things are the way they are for no reason, i.e., just contingently. And the medieval mind could not abide contingency.
Their answer: there is something rather than nothing because the something exists necessarily. Existence exists because existence must exist; it is necessary. That certainly covers it, or would cover it. If we are wondering why that thing over there happened or why it exists at all, it is explanatory to learn that it had to happen or that it had to exist.
We may ask, necessary for what? Necessary like a glass of milk is necessary in the presence of cookies? No, the Medieval philosophers meant necessary full stop; necessary under any and all conditions; necessary as a matter of logic. Existence existed necessarily and not a with a necessity given some other condition. Under all conditions or no conditions given, existence existed. No matter what.
They had a point. After all, what could existence be conditioned on outside of itself?
If there is something rather than nothing because the something exists necessarily, we still need to ask where the requisite necessity—the necessary necessity—can be found. Medieval thinkers found the necessity they were looking for in Aristotelian teleology, a fancy word often glossed as “essential purposiveness.” The word “teleology” comes from the Greek word telos, meaning end or goal. Something is teleological if it involves goals or purposes. According to Aristotle, physical matter, for instance, had a telos, it had a goal: it wanted to move to the center of the earth. Matter strived; it struggled. When you pick up a stone from where it was resting on the ground and raise it above your head, you struggle against the stone’s desire and will to move to the center of the earth. You provide resistance. When you let it go, it drops—because of its essential telos—until something else provides resistance, in this case the ground.
If something is teleological, then it has a purpose to it and it often has its purpose as a matter of its essence, just because of what it is. In other words, its purpose is necessary in virtue of its definition, like a triangle necessarily has three sides. The medieval mind thus explained to itself why things fell to the ground from a height even when not acted on by any apparent force. The force for movement came from within the matter’s essence itself. Matter aimed at a goal. Water aimed at its goal. Fire aimed at its goal. And the universe in total, existence itself, aimed at its goal.
Stay tuned for part 4…