Paul Davies - The Mystery of Existence

If all that exists—everything imaginable, physical and nonphysical—is 'something'. Why is there 'something' rather than 'nothing'? Wouldn't 'nothing' be simpler than any sort of 'something'? It's a haunting wonderment. It's the biggest possible question. Why is there anything at all? There must be an answer. But who can know it?



Paul Davies is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist and astrobiologist.


Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[browngreen]

Something exists. That's about all we know for sure. Everything else is speculation and conjecture.

[jayk]

The age old questions of “why”, “how”, “who” have been the cause of immeasurable collective existential angst suffered by humanity over the eons. We often assuage this anxiety by ritual belief - deferring it to the creator or the father. A father that we trust is the penultimate intelligence, reason and beginning. This is a heavy load we ask our gods to carry for us. Imagine the magnitude of existential angst our gods endure when they inevitably ask the same questions of themselves - why am I god, why am I here, how did I get here, what is my purpose, who am I, who is my father?. Even if he/she/they have all these answers - she will have a final unanswerable question too. That’s anxiety at a galactic scale :)

Perhaps “why” is not a relevant question in the context of forever

[chuckmiller]

Was there a day when consciousness happened? An event that happened and all of a sudden, consciousness started? It's a strange idea...

[ingenuity]

If there's a creator, it's having a good laugh at how we're trying to figure it out.

[anthonycraig]

Agenda means there is a mind with an intent involved. If you don’t mean that, don’t use the word. this is probably why you cant bring the debate to a higher level.

[engadge]

The more i think about it, the more i feel convinced that the universe is actually a simulation happening in some sort of a computer

[BugRib]

At first I didn't think his final argument made any sense, but then it clicked. Really interesting point he made there at the end. If consciousness is inevitable, then teleology is literally built into the fabric of the universe.

[buckanderson]

The universe was created for the living because only the living care. A stone doesn't contemplate the meaning of it's existence.

[Slo-ryde]

This is a question we can never answer within the context of our existence. We cannot answer it anymore than a cartoon character can know the answer why it was created. This is because the answer is not contained within our very substance, because we are derived of that which came into existence, not from that which allows for such existence. Our universe is like being suspended inside an expanding balloon. From the inside, all parts of the balloon look the same as it is being inflated. Suppose you are inside a vessel that you can travel with and you head for the inner wall of the balloon but no matter how fast you move, the balloon is expanding even faster, thereby locking you in, as you can never reach the confines. That is analogous to how our universe is, expanding in all directions faster than the speed of light. The only way to know the totality, is if somebody takes you out of the balloon, and then you will who and how the balloon is being inflated and how large it truly is, and why it is there at all! Meanwhile these guys are selling books, writing about something that we cannot know.

[liberty-matrix]

“Humanity, just another failed mutation; another closed-end biological mistake.” ~ George Carlin

[stPrinciples]

Quantum field is spookily similar to Buddhism Nothingness. Physicists while desperately seeking answers could have come across or overheard the idea of nothingness mentioned in Buddhism and got a eureka moment. This we can never rule out as a possibility. But buddhism knew that thousands of years ago.

[robertiggulden]

Rather than god creating the universe could it be that the universe has created god...in an evolutionary process ?

[DanielVerberne]

Definitely saving this video. Paul Davies' books, especially 'The Mind of God', 'The Goldilocks Enigma', 'The Eerie Silence', 'The Origin of Life/The Fifth Miracle', 'The Demon in the Machine' and my newly arrived and yet unread, 'What's Eating the Universe? ... I've had an intellectual feast reading his works over the years! I'm a 42 year old Australian guy, I work in IT rather than the sciences, but find the so-called 'Big questions' externally fascinating.

PS: If I was to say something philosophical to add to some of the wise comments here, it is this: I see no obvious escape from the problem of infinite regress when it comes to seeking ever-greater explanations for earlier and earlier events leading back to the moment of creation of the Universe, or what we currently understand as a beginning (Big Bang or some other similarly-fundamental point) It seems to me that even if there exists intelligent life in the Universe and even if that life was to endure for billions of years, somehow continue to thrive, grow and refine themselves, I STILL cannot see how even some Kardashev Level 3 superspecies would be able to get around the infinite regress of explanation.

What I mean is simply this - Q) What caused the earliest forms of stars to form? A) Probably - Vast clouds of molecular hydrogen atoms underwent some form of collapse until central regions reached sufficient levels of temperature and pressure to commence nuclear fusion. Q) How are we to account for the clouds of hydrogen gas? A) Hydrogen atoms were able to form after the recombination era when the Universe average temperature had dropped below the level that was previously preventing ionized matter from settling into its familiar atomic arrangement, required the passing of time Q) Whence doth even the ionized hydrogen originate? A) Um, the Big Bang, possibly. Q) An unimaginably-dense point, a singularity somehow burst its shackles to burst forth and subsequently go through a period of inflation? What could have caused that? Q) I'm not sure. We're collectively not sure, although some might argue that if we take the idea of spacetime originating at the point of the Big Bang, then some might argue that any notion of a 'before' and therefore of causality itself - are moot or meaningless. Q) I find your answer unsatisfactory and require a deeper explanation than the one before - and we'd be doing so well! Proceed deeper, please. Q) Okay, well, perhaps - and this is outside any notion of established science here; perhaps the Big Bang we think of as a singular, monumental fount of everything that ever was or will be, it was instead a more ... localised affair, perhaps one Big bang among many that gave rise to our local Universe residing within a great - and possibility infinite - roster of other Universes. How's that? Q) I appreciate the disclaimer and I do credit you for at least trying to go deeper, but instead of knowing more, I find myself simply applying less significance to your earlier explanation of a singular 'Big Bang'. If it could be one of a possible sea of them, then surely you won't blame me for wanting to ask who or what is responsible for all those Big Bangs! In fact, forgive me but you're just giving me new avenues of questions! How many big bangs were there? Are they still occurring somewhere, somehow? Why those particular types of 'bangs' and not others? Why have 'bangs' at all? What was wrong with came before the bangs and if there was no 'before', what could possibly exist in the frames between to possibly fill my desired role as causative force in chief?

[MrVikingsandra]

Oh I love Paul Davies' books! I just finished one, I love the way he explains things

[rizwanrafeek]

@7-07 oh the universe is teeming with life is sort of inevitable well if life is inevitable why can't mind why can't comprehension inevitable.

These were trillion dollar question, I love it.

[Jose-gdji]

Answering Why? Is more difficult than answering how

[jaleneR]

[Possible Axiom 1}: A universe without observers is an abomination.

Perhaps the whole point of existence is simply to experience the universe subjectively, however it came into existence...? Who knows?

[jayk]

After thousands of years, if the bible or qur’an were the “answer” then everyone would have long ago stopped asking the “question”. Yet here you are, here we sit, relying on ‘belief’ in lieu of anything rational. For every “believer” the price of admission to this fiction is not just adopting a convenient “ belief” but rather begins first by suspending their own natural disbelief. That speaks volumes to me. I agree its time for another approach as Paul Davies describes.

[enfomy]

How would nothing be simpler than any sort of something? nothing is a sort of something. Nothing existing is just as mysterious as something. There's no proof nothing does or doesnt exist. No one has observed absolute nothingness.

[User-kjxklyntrw]

The first person experience as observer, doer and receiver is the very important question about conciousness