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Why does the universe exist? | Jim Holt | TED
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CEFR Level
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Subtitles (413 segments)
Why does the universe exist?
Why is there — Okay. Okay. (Laughter)
This is a cosmic mystery. Be solemn.
Why is there a world, why are we in it,
and why is there something rather than nothing at all?
I mean, this is the super ultimate "why" question?
So I'm going to talk about the mystery of existence,
the puzzle of existence,
where we are now in addressing it,
and why you should care,
and I hope you do care.
The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said that
those who don't wonder about the contingency of their existence,
of the contingency of the world's existence,
are mentally deficient.
That's a little harsh, but still. (Laughter)
So this has been called the most sublime
and awesome mystery,
the deepest and most far-reaching question
man can pose.
It's obsessed great thinkers.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, perhaps the greatest
philosopher of the 20th century,
was astonished that there should be a world at all.
He wrote in his "Tractatus," Proposition 4.66,
"It is not how things are in the world
that is the mystical,
it's that the world exists."
And if you don't like taking your epigrams
from a philosopher, try a scientist.
John Archibald Wheeler, one of the great physicists
of the 20th century,
the teacher of Richard Feynman,
the coiner of the term "black hole,"
he said, "I want to know
how come the quantum,
how come the universe, how come existence?"
And my friend Martin Amis —
sorry that I'll be doing a lot of name-dropping in this talk,
so get used to it —
my dear friend Martin Amis once said
that we're about five Einsteins away from answering
the mystery of where the universe came from.
And I've no doubt there are five Einsteins
in the audience tonight.
Any Einsteins? Show of hands? No? No? No?
No Einsteins? Okay.
So this question, why is there something rather than nothing,
this sublime question, was posed rather late
in intellectual history.
It was towards the end of the 17th century,
the philosopher Leibniz who asked it,
a very smart guy, Leibniz,
who invented the calculus
independently of Isaac Newton, at about the same time,
but for Leibniz, who asked why is there something rather than nothing,
this was not a great mystery.
He either was or pretended to be
an Orthodox Christian in his metaphysical outlook,
and he said it's obvious why the world exists:
because God created it.
And God created, indeed, out of nothing at all.
That's how powerful God is.
He doesn't need any preexisting materials to fashion a world out of.
He can make it out of sheer nothingness,
creation ex nihilo.
And by the way, this is what
most Americans today believe.
There is no mystery of existence for them.
God made it.
So let's put this in an equation.
I don't have any slides so I'm going to mime my visuals,
so use your imaginations.
So it's God + nothing = the world.
Okay? Now that's the equation.
And so maybe you don't believe in God.
Maybe you're a scientific atheist
or an unscientific atheist, and you don't believe in God,
and you're not happy with it.
By the way, even if we have this equation,
God + nothing = the world,
there's already a problem:
Why does God exist?
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