Why there is something instead of nothing may all be about perspective

Make an “O” shape with your thumb and forefinger and contemplate it. It represents both a number and a concept: zero, nothing. In between your fingers is air, but what about between the air molecules? You say there is a vacuum.

Some physicists over the last 40 years, including Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, Frank Wilczek, and Laurence Krauss, have gleefully claimed that the vacuum is, in fact, not empty but full of quantum fluctuations. Therefore, they argue, the age-old question: “why is there something instead of nothing?” that has beguiled philosophers since the time of the ancient Greeks has its answer in quantum physics. There is no such thing as nothing and never has been.

This is a category error made ambiguous by semantics, however, meaning that they are trying to settle a different question, but worded in the same way. Philosophers have long recognized that the same sequence of words forming a question, depending on where emphasis has been added and how terms are defined, can be many different questions.

In this case, the physicists claim to have answered the question: why is there some thing instead of no thing? Where thing denotes some material object, such as a particle.

A philosopher, on the other hand, has no real interest in such questions, unlike the physicist. The philosopher wants to know why there is something instead of nothing? Quantum fluctuations are something. Therefore, the philosopher asks why are there quantum fluctuations?

Krauss argues that the physicist’s question and answer are superior and that the philosopher is arguing over poorly defined terms that ought to be swept away by the physicist’s rigor.

I argue that Krauss and others have merely led us further astray from the path to enlightenment because they base their explanations on physical concepts that are themselves ill-defined.

What modern physicists fail to understand, ancient and medieval philosophers understood well. Under an infinite regression of contingencies, where one thing is dependent (not caused by, mind you) on another, there must be a last and final contingency.

Saint Thomas Aquinas argued that this final contingency is God. Therefore, the answer to why there is something rather than nothing is God. This last contingency, of course, must not be dependent on anything and therefore is a necessary Being, a Being who cannot not exist. This is simply an implication of having no contingencies.

Whether this God has all the properties of the Christian God requires quite a few more arguments. Noted Atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell, acknowledging the need for such a Being, nevertheless suggested that it might simply be energy since energy was believed at the time to be always conserved.

We now know that this is not true. General relativity, the theory of gravity, can, under some circumstances, fail to conserve energy, but one could easily replace his objection with information…unless, of course, we find out that General Relativity fails to conserve that too in the case of black holes or quantum mechanics fails to conserve it with wavefunction collapse.

Indeed, it might be hard to find a substitute.

Coming back to vacuum fluctuations, there are several good arguments that they don’t exist, which pulls the rug out from under Krauss. The well-known “proofs” of their existence, even the famous Casimir effect, all have alternative explanations in terms of material particles. Therefore, the space between the air molecules in your hands may in fact be nothing except empty space.

If you consider space to be a “thing,” then are we not accepting back into physics a kind of “ether” that was thrown out with Einstein’s revolutionary theory of special relativity? At best, space is merely the interaction of particles with the gravitational field that defines “space”, and, if there is no particle there to interact, can we say that the space is even there? We cannot perceive space itself after all.

If space and time merely emerge from the gravitational field, then the gravitational field is not defined over any space or time. Rather, it is merely a collection of particle-particle interactions with gravitational forces. Even without resorting to common explanations of emergent spacetime from quantum gravity theories such as loop quantum gravity or causal set theory, consider that the gravitational field itself, the metric tensor of general relativity, defines distances. It is, itself, defined over an artificial coordinate system that has no physical meaning. Rather than resorting to such global structures as a coordinate system, which muddy the reality of what is going on, we can use the concept of infinitesimal translations to show that gravity is itself the structure of spacetime.

So suppose you have a test particle A at some location in spacetime. In the absence of other particles or matter, it is impossible to locate this particle. Space and time might as well not exist for it. Now, introduce some other body B into spacetime. How do we explain the distance between the test particle and body B? We have to look at the shortest path, known as a geodesic, between particle A and body B. This geodesic, however, arises not from traversing space but from translating another test particle C from the location of the original test particle A to body B. Defining some tiny distance, we can translate C along a geodesic, which we can define mathematically as the shortest distance by the principle of least action.

Thus, space itself is nothing more than the translation, by the gravitational field, from one point A to another point B of a particle C. It does not “exist” in the sense of being observed directly, but is rather a property of the particle C. This is how quantum physics defines it as well, except that position becomes an operator on the particle’s wavefunction rather than a point.

This strengthens my original proposition that there is “nothing” between the air molecules (and I should add also between the light, assuming that there is some radiation as well) because there isn’t even space between them. Space is something I infer counterfactually, in the sense that it would appear that there is space there if there were something there. Since there is no matter from which to infer that space exists, however, I can make no such inference. There really is nothing there.

But, you say, what about when things just emerge from space on their own without any source? You have heard of particles popping into existence from the vacuum. Surely they are proof, not only of space, but of vacuum energy.

Consider a black hole. Radiation emits from just outside the event horizon of all black holes. This is called “Hawking radiation” after the man who predicted its existence. Although it is too weak to observe directly, its existence has been inferred from observations.

Hawking radiation appears to come from nowhere, and, in his popular books, Hawking invented a fanciful explanation that it comes from particle-antiparticle pairs appearing out of nothing, borrowing some energy from the black hole’s mass to go from virtual to real, and one falling in while the other makes its way into the larger universe. This explanation is completely nonsensical as it would suggest that Hawking radiation is mostly made of half particles and half anti-particles when it is actually made of photons.

Nobody knows why Hawking made this up, but even some physicists who should know better quote it from time to time. And lest you think I am misunderstanding Hawking, I’m not the only one who has noticed this.

One realistic explanation for Hawking radiation is that it emerges from the difference in spacetime curvature near a black hole versus far away. Curved spacetime has more energy than non-curved spacetime; therefore, there is a transfer of energy from curved to uncurved spacetime in the form of radiation. This is just basic thermodynamics, except for the origin of the radiation, which must come from quantum fields in the vacuum.

Or must it?

The reality is that we don’t need quantum vacuum energy to explain it at all.

The key to understanding why is to note that the radiation we perceive as Hawking radiation from far away is not perceived at all at the event horizon. Thus, the radiation itself is an observer effect. If the radiation were made up of massive particles, as in Hawking’s nonsense explanation, we would have to acknowledge their vacuum fluctuation origin since massive particles cannot disappear based on one’s state of motion, but, because it is radiation, it is redshifted into non-existence at the event horizon. To quote myself on this:

Thus, Hawking radiation is not consistent from one reference frame to another and that is because how we define quantum “vacuum” is not consistent across reference frames either. “Vacuum” at the event horizon looks like a bath of thermal radiation coming out of the black hole to a distant observer.

The same is true with other supposed proofs of the existence of vacuum energy, such as the radiation that emerges from the Rindler horizon (which I don’t go into here, but you can read the above article if you are curious).

In essence, what looks like “nothing” to one observer is “something” to another.

Now we are thoroughly confused because we started on solid ground, believing that at least we know what something and nothing are in a physical sense. Now it is clear that something and nothing are observer-dependent, and one person’s something is another person’s nothing.

And much as philosophers would like to make the distinction between physical somethings like particles versus vacuum and philosophical somethings such as a concept versus the absence of that concept, it really isn’t that simple if nothing can be relative!

What if, after all, our own existence and the existence of the universe are simply observer effects? What if we occupy a privileged position in the cosmos that allows us to perceive existence, and when we move away from that position, everything ceases to exist?

Descartes said “cogito; ergo sum” or “I think; therefore, I am”. This means that as long as we can think, we are aware of our own existence. Hence, when thinking ceases, as with death, do we cease to exist?

Worse still, when all thinking ceases, when the human race vanishes from the cosmos along with other intelligent life, does that universe cease to exist?

This is what I mean by privileged position, leading us to observe that something exists, when from another standpoint, nothing exists. There is something because we (all of us together) think.

This doesn’t mean that the universe is an illusion. I am not arguing for solipsism or anti-realism. The universe isn’t somehow all in our minds. Rather, our minds place us in a position where the universe appears to exist. When our minds cease to be, we are no longer in that place, and we no longer perceive the universe to be.

This is important, so I want to emphasize this with an analogy.

Life is like living far from the black hole. You are born somewhere far away from it. Living your life, you slowly fall in like a raindrop. When you are far from it, you perceive Hawking radiation coming at you. This is existence, the universe. We will, for now, for the sake of analogy, imagine that the black hole is outside the universe.

As you fall towards the black hole, the Hawking radiation behind you begins to redshift. It becomes less and less energetic. This is your past fading. But you still perceive more Hawking radiation coming from below you, going strong. This is your future.

There comes a point, however, when you will cross the event horizon and the Hawking radiation will cease. You will no longer perceive anything ahead of you. All Hawking radiation will have vanished behind you. The only thing left to perceive will be things that fell in with you.

This is death. And only other dead things follow you in.

Just as Hawking radiation ceases to exist, so existence itself ceases for you. You are no longer in the special position where you can observe that there is something. For you, there is now nothing.

This leads us to the amazing conclusion about why there is something instead of nothing:

The universe exists for you because you perceive.

In other words, not only cogito; ergo sum but cogito; ergo est, “I think; therefore it is.”

I have felt this in my spiritual journey.

Ever since I was about 6 years old, I have found the concept of non-existence to be extremely frightening. I would experience bouts of white knuckled fear at the thought that one day I would cease to be.

Perhaps deep down I knew that as I ceased to think so the universe would cease for me. Something would become nothing. The idea of life “going on” after me was a fallacy. It would not go on from my vantage point. It would only go on for others from their still living perspective.

Even when I returned to the church at age 35, I could not find solace in promises of eternal life when I die until I came to understand that eternal life and death, heaven and hell, are simply two different vantage points, like the difference in perception near a black hole versus far away. Heaven is the vantage point near God where everything looks joyful. Hell is the one far away, where everything is despair. And the universe looks so different in each place, yet it is the same universe we are looking at.

One cannot have one perspective versus the other simply by obeying certain rituals or reciting certain creeds or statements like “Jesus is Lord” or “Christ is King”; rather, the transformation of perspective is internal, a dying to self. For it is the self that plunges us into nothingness in the end. It is the self that weaves its spider’s web throughout our lives and makes us stand further and further from the source of all light.

Transformation is a shift in perspective that has tangible consequences. It requires external force and plots a new course for us. This divine force is what puts us on a trajectory that takes us not into the black hole but slingshots us around it and casts us into a new and greater universe.

There is only one real way to achieve this, however, and that is to ask for it. There is no program to follow, no practice to establish, and no way that any of us can avoid the inevitable on our own. If we ask and no answer comes, then we have lost nothing, but if an answer does come, oh, what then? As Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount,

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. (Matthew 7:7-8 ESV)

This is good news, but also terrifying because once you knock, you have to choose whether to go through, knowing that on the other side lies the cross, the death of the flesh, but, beyond that, eternal life.

All well and good, you say, but this seems unjust to ask me to make a decision that will land me in either paradise or a place of eternal torment based on so little as a door being opened!

Yet, that misses the whole point I’ve been trying to make, which is that you are going to the same place regardless of what decision you make.

This is the idea, prevalent in Eastern Orthodoxy, that heaven and hell are the same place. From “Paradise and Hell in the Orthodox Tradition” by Protopresbyter George Metallinos:

Paradise and hell are not two different places. (This version is an idolatrous concept.) They signify two different situations (ways), which originate from the same uncreated source, and are perceived by man as two, different experiences. Or, more precisely, they are the same experience, except that they are perceived differently by man, depending on man’s internal state.

Thus, in Orthodox theology, indeed, our inner state, meaning our perspective, is what causes us to perceive either joyful bliss or endless torment, not some place to which we have been sent for punishment or reward, an idea from paganism. Rather, the veil between us and God that exists in this life will be lifted, and, depending on our own internal state, we will feel bliss or torment from His radiant glory.

Something and nothing. Heaven and hell. It is all perspective. It is observer-dependent.

The choice about what vantage point you want to have is up to you.