Jim Holt

Jim Holt is a journalist who frequently writes about purely scientific issues, but who is also comfortable writing about philosophy and cosmology. This book is a memoire of his personal exploration of what may be the most profound of all philosophical inquiries: the question of why the world exists. After all, it is imaginable (but perhaps not possible) that there might be nothing at all. Holt admits that the question of the cause of existence had not occurred to him until he read show more Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics. His early curiosity was satisfied by the nuns who told him that God made the world. But he is now looking for a nontheistic explanation, which is the central tenet of the book.

Holt begins his search with a review of the “usual suspects,” eminent philosophers of old. To his (and my) mild surprise, the concept of creation ex nihilo is relatively modern, starting with second or third century Christian philosophers. The Greeks, Hebrews, and primitive societal “creation myths” all began with some unformed substrate that had always existed. Christian doctrine seems to be the first to sanction the idea of nothingness as a genuine ontological possibility.

Gottfried Leibniz first articulated the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which postulates that for every truth, there must be a reason why it is so and not otherwise. Leibniz argued that God’s nonexistence was logically impossible, but both David Hume and Immanuel Kant refuted him, asserting that no being’s existence was guaranteed as a matter of pure logic.

Holt observes that a purely scientific explanation would ineluctably involve a physical cause, which would necessarily make the explanation circular. A theist would say that God’s essence is existence, but what does that mean? Russian physicist Andrei Linde theorizes that the theory of cosmic “chaotic inflation” explains the existence of the matter of the universe as created from the negative energy of the gravitational field, making it possible for a hacker physicist in another universe to have created ours in his lab! Holt notices that this explanation does not avoid the problem of infinite regress, i.e., from whence did the hacker physicist emanate?

Henri Bergson tried to refocus the issue by arguing that it was not possible for there to be nothing at all. That argument made no impression on Martin Heidegger, for whom the mystery of existence was the “most fundamental of all questions.” Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that the question of existence was beyond the limits of language, into the realm of the unsayable: he said “The riddle [of existence] does not exist.” Bertrand Russell said, “…the universe is just there, and that is all.” In 1927, Georges Lemaitre worked out an Einsteinian model of the universe where space was expanding, which was confirmed empirically by Edwin Hubble. Working backward, scientists and cosmologists have concluded the universe had a beginning, about 13.7 billion years ago.

Holt was not content to confine his research to dead intellectuals. So he traveled to Paris, London, Oxford (several times), Pittsburgh, and Austin, Tex., to meet eminent living philosophers, physicists, and cosmologists [David Deutsch, Adolf Grünbaum, John Leslie, Derek Parfit, Roger Penrose, Richard Swinburne, and Steven Weinberg], and even interviewed the philosophically inclined novelist John Updike. Their explanations are sometimes startling and often strange.

Philosopher Adolf Grünbaum, was not surprised at being at all. Why, he argues, is nothingness somehow more natural than existence? The ancients started with matter, not the void; to him, nothingness is stranger than being. Holt’s other interlocutors disagree—they marvel at being, but they confirm Grünbaum’s point about the puzzling nature of nothingness. If the universe started with a Big Bang, did it burst out like “a party girl jumping out of a cake,” as British astronomer Fred Hoyle put it? But what was the “cake” from which to burst? Holt quotes a beautiful definition by the physicist Alex Vilenkin: “a closed spherical spacetime of zero radius.” Try jumping out of that. No wonder the philosopher Robert Nozick said that “someone who proposes a nonstrange answer shows he didn’t understand the question.”

Holt personalizes his quest in the final chapter, where he gives a sympathetic account of the death of his mother: her passing from being to nothingness. This section was particularly moving for me since my own mother is now 92 years old and failing rather rapidly.
Holt is effective at summarizing the thoughts of some very deep thinkers in a few words. Summarizing his summaries surely disserves the original thinkers, but what else can one do in a short review? I, unlike some - well, most - of my colleagues, found the book stimulating and engrossing. It helps, however, to have had a nontrivial background in philosophy, physics, and the philosophy of science.

(JAB) show less

Largely because of the old saw about a joke ceasing to be funny when you have to explain it, I was a bit dubious about starting this book, as the subtitle "a History and Philosophy of Jokes" didn't seem to hold too much promise. What a pleasant surprise, then, to begin the book to find that not only does author Jim Holt have a pleasing and engaging narrative voice, but that the book, unlike much of the genre purporting to deconstruct the concept of the joke (Sigmund Freud, I'm talking to show more you) is itself quite funny. Although Holt does enumerate the various philosophies purporting to explain why we, as a species, find jokes funny, he never descends into academic dryness.

The book is extremely short -- 126 pages, much of which is taken up by illustrations -- and thus, is something of a lengthened article rather than a book (a trait that Holt more or less concedes in the preface). Nonetheless, the book never feels rushed or underdeveloped, and I actually found myself sorry it was ending so quickly.

A tip for New Yorkers, or people who have spent a fair amount of time here: even if you think you don't want to read the book itself, pick it up next time you're in the bookstore and read the footnote on pages 80 to 81. It was so funny (to me, anyway) that I actually started carrying the book around so I could read it to people. show less

In truth, a book such as Jim Holt's Why Does the World Exist? should appeal to everyone. This is a question which everyone has, at some stage and to some variable degree, contemplated, whether in existential angst, exasperation or ponderance. Atheists look to science to provide the answers, agnostics perhaps look to philosophy, and theists rely on that old crutch of 'God'. Holt's work embraces this diversity, and is consequently a fantastic introduction to the dilemma of why there is show more something rather than nothing. This is because it is, as its subtitle proclaims, an 'existential detective story' - Holt is embarking on this quest for ultimate truth along with the reader. Of course, it should come as no surprise that he reaches no conclusive answer as to the origins of the universe, but during his investigations he encounters a wide variety of theories, and is capable of digesting and explaining them to his own audience. Thus, we get explanations and critiques encompassing science, philosophy, metaphysics and theology, to name a few. Holt is open-minded enough to assess the relative merits of each of these and, in refreshing contrast to other works of this nature, is not overly contemptuous of the 'God hypothesis' (though he does not treat it with undue reverence either, as he notes its many logical fallacies).

Some of these theories are complicated, as you would imagine any attempt to understand the universe would be. As such, the book itself might take longer to read than its length (a shade under 300 pages) would suggest as you try to wrap your head around the various competing theories. Some of these theories have more to recommend them than others - quantum fluctuations, multiverses, or chaotic inflation, for example, are more intellectually sound than religious dogma or the woolly Platonic insistence on the logical necessity of goodness - but all are treated by Holt with respect, as he correctly assumes that no one can presume to hold theoretical answers that are so watertight that they cannot be challenged by other competing theories.

Holt also shows that the question of why there is something rather than nothing is more than just a question of how the Big Bang (itself only a hypothesis) poofed into existence out of absolute nothingness. He expands his remit to question our own perceptions (Can we imagine absolute nothingness, free of our own consciousness? Does the self even exist?) and to debate the meaning of such words as 'truth' and 'reality', though in my opinion these debates are resolved by semantics and therefore cannot be truly examined by the compromised and limited human mind.

Indeed, this question as to whether humankind can truly comprehend such abstractions as existence, time and reality arguably makes the search for an answer to the titular question futile. After all, our understanding of the universe is only how we perceive it through our own eyes, through our own limited processor that is the human brain. We call certain things atoms, and attempt to identify universal natural laws, but is that the same thing to an impersonal universe? We perceive time as a guide for how our lives seem to pass, but is time even linear, as it seems to our minds? Can the ultimate question of the universe truly be resolved by the tiny minds of tiny creatures living on a tiny planet in a tiny galaxy in a far-off corner of said universe? Which itself may be only one of many universes in a wider multiverse?

Holt acknowledges the possible futility of this question and, as I said before, no reader will finish reading this book with an definitive answer. Holt's own conclusions, presented late on in the book, are interesting, as he appropriates the idea of Selectors and meta-Selectors from the willing philosopher Derek Parfit. This, at the very least, provides a coherent possibility of why there is something rather than nothing, even if it does not provoke an epiphanic reaction in the reader that one has found the ultimate truth.

But what Holt's quest truly presents to us is that the journey, the attempt to even ask such questions, is itself enriching. Towards the end, Holt engages in a discourse with John Updike. This is refreshing as, unlike the others Holt corresponds with who are scientists and philosophers who made their name with one theory or another, Updike is a novelist with no pet theory and is consequently free to ponder existence without the shackles of the obligation to defend one's own theory. This discourse shows that even thinking about the question can itself be rewarding. The final few chapters, as Holt formulates his conclusions, engages in a discourse with Updike, and deals with a personal loss that coincides with his ponderances on mortality and non-existence, are the most invigorating in the entire book. They show that the question of why the world exists is not merely one of theoretical abstractions but one of powerful and profound implications for our individual lives. Indeed, one could perhaps recast Holt's book not as an attempt to find an answer to the ultimate question, but an attempt to show us that the fact that such a question can even be pondered is itself a cause for wonderment. show less

Since I first read it a couple of years ago, I've returned more often to Jim Holt's excellent "Why Does the World Exist?" than any other book. His off-the-cuff conversations with a gaggle of famous philosophers, cosmologists, and astrophysicists let the lay reader grapple with enormously complex ideas related to a single world-class conundrum, and the commentaries that followed each chapter showed the strengths and weaknesses of each argument and highlighted how good the author is at making show more fantastically complex philosophical ideas accessible to non-PhD candidates.

"When Einstein Walked with Gödel isn't quite that good, but it's still a worthwhile read. Holt's ability to make mind-stretching ideas accessible is still evident on every page, but this one is basically a collections of essays, mostly short, that Holt's written over the years. There's a lot of interesting stuff here, of course. We hear about different views of infinity, about whether Einstein thought time actually existed, about string theory, and about people who equate numbers to Platonic forms. Holt takes the troubled, alluring Ada Lovelace down a peg and takes a potshot at Richard Dawkins. He considers the ultimate fate of the universe. Amazingly enough, I think that I sort of understand most of what's going on here, and I've never taken a college-level science course.

At the end of the day, though, I missed the aforementioned book's laser focus and found myself wishing that most of these chapters were longer. But who knows? I plan on reading more Holt in the future, of course. And "Why Does the World Exist?" seems to have gotten much more traction than you'd figure a book with that title would, so I'm hoping he'll have something new out soon. This book doesn't quite live up to it's snazzy title, and even its best moments are spoonful-sized, but you can still consider this review a recommendation. show less