A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing

by Lawrence Krauss

I want thus to return to the question I described at the beginning of this book: Why is there something rather than nothing? We are now presumably in a better position to address this, having reviewed the modern scientific picture of the universe, its history, and its possible future, as well as operational descriptions of what “nothing” might actually comprise. As I also alluded to at the beginning of this book, this question too has been informed by science, like essentially all such philosophical questions. Far from providing a framework that forces upon us the requirement of a creator, the very meaning of the words involved have so changed that the sentence has lost much of its original meaning—something that again is not uncommon, as empirical knowledge shines a new light on otherwise dark corners of our imagination. At the same time, in science we have to be particularly cautious about “why” questions. When we ask, “Why?” we usually mean “How?” If we can answer the latter, that generally suffices for our purposes. For example, we might ask: “Why is the Earth 93 million miles from the Sun?” but what we really probably mean is, “How is the Earth 93 million miles from the Sun?” That is, we are interested in what physical processes led to the Earth ending up in its present position. “Why” implicitly suggests purpose, and when we try to understand the solar system in scientific terms, we do not generally ascribe purpose to it.