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WHY SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING?

8/7/2012

 
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Why Something Rather than Nothing?
    Wondering why they exist isn’t done by grasshoppers or grizzly bears or people struggling to hang on to existence. Those who flaunt religion like a badge of virtue reject the question. Those of deep faith may offer a tolerant pat on the head. The question only concerns philosophers, scientists, and others who refuse to leave well enough alone.
    A new book by Jim Holt, Why Does the World Exist? asks smart people, and I want to know what they think because I ask it at night. It helps me fall asleep.
    I try to imagine non-existence—nothing—but it eludes me. The ancient Greeks had Hypnos and Thanatos—sleep and peaceful death—and they were brothers. Awake, I’m embedded in existence. When asleep, I slip out, but when I wake up, existence absorbs me once again. I certainly don’t imagine that the world vanishes when I lose consciousness of it, and cannot imagine no world at all. Nothingness is unimaginable.
    Recent scientific theories that posit infinite Universes are easier to conceptualize than Nothingness. A Megaverse of Infinite universes is conceivable although tricky. No matter how you divide infinity, the result is always infinity, so if there is one Universe with life, there are an infinite number!   Life times infinity has glory,

    It seems bound into the newly discovered Higgs Boson, proving that a Higgs Field pervades our Universe. You might say that something like a Higgs Field has already been imagined; “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” (Genesis 1.2)
    The Higgs Field gives every other particle weight; which is the essence of  existence. Different particles have different weights, so we also get information. The closest I can imagine to Nothingness is a Universe of energy/mass and information. Another word for information is form. I can’t imagine any thing without form, even a blob has it, so energy (which can be mass) and information go together.
    (A sly assignment I used to give choreography students was to create a dance study without form. Whatever they came up with, other students could always detect form in it.)

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   Information accumulates until there’s enough to constitute Life. Life as  we experience it, it is no more than a baby step toward some towering Ur-Life, conceivable yet unexplainable. Dogged attempts to explain it can grow unto dogmas over which people slaughter one another trying to impose theirs.  
    These are some of the thoughts that make me so eager to read what really smart people have to say when my copy of Why Does the World Exist? arrives in the mail.

Lavinia Magliocco link
8/7/2012 10:35:57 am

I wonder too. A lot. I wonder about death, having had the great privilege and good fortune to be holding my father's hand when he breathed his last breath. Right now I'm on a journey in Buddhist, Taoist, and Tantric practices for awareness. All these traditions talk about the void, emptiness, shunyata. Maybe the void is with us - present because of form, because without space information would Eb menaningless. The space between notes in music, the pause between inhaling and exhaling. I can't conceive of an absolute void. Write more when you get the book!

Stuart Hodes link
8/7/2012 11:17:37 am

Thank you. I will!

bob green link
8/12/2012 03:31:08 am

I find the book “The Origin of the Universe – Case Closed” to be compelling. It has easy to follow math in the Appendix to back up its claims. It is hard to argue with math! It’s easy to follow with many pictures.

Stephanie link
8/15/2012 09:26:34 am

Also intrigued by this book's title: Thank god -- finally, the answer!

LOVE your choreography assignment. May I steal, credit given of course?

visit link
7/22/2013 09:16:31 pm

As you rightly said, “Nothingness is unimaginable”. But I can’t agree with your inclination towards religion to solve these secrets. Only science has helped us to understand the universe. Not some religious books. Naming the Higgs Boson as God particle was the biggest irony.


Comments are closed.
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    Author (Yuma, AZ, 1944)

    Being 90 years in this world,  with great kids,  great grandkids, great wives (two, one at a time) and great memories, I wonder why some people seem to have stopped loving the U.S.A.? I will wonder in print right here. If you wonder too, or can provide some answers, please comment.
                                   Stuart Hodes

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           With my friend, Nero.
                   April, 2012.
        Photo by Ray Madrigal

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