According to this Wikipedia article, Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing “is a question about the reason for basic existence which has been raised or commented on by a range of philosophers and physicists, including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Martin Heidegger, who called it “the fundamental question of metaphysics.”
German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz introduced his inquiry more than three hundred years ago.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, according to this Wikipedia article, “was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who is credited, alongside Sir Isaac Newton, with the creation of calculus in addition to many other branches of mathematics, such as binary arithmetic and statistics. Leibniz has been called the “last universal genius” due to his vast expertise across fields, which became a rarity after his lifetime with the coming of the Industrial Revolusion and the spread of specialized labor. He is a prominent figure in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. He wrote books on philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, law, history, philology, games, music, and other studies. Leibniz also made major contributions to physics and technology, and anticipated notions that surfaced much later in probability theory, biology, medicine, geology, psychology, linguistics, and computer science.”
According to this article, Gottfried W. Leibniz (1646-1716) posed the question “in regard to the origin of the universe as part of his argument for the existence of God.” The argument that justifies God as the answer to “Why Is There Something Rather Than Noting” is known as the Leibniz Contingency Argument or the Leibniz Cosmological Argument.
The Leibniz Contingency Argument comprises four parts.
- Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence.
- If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
- The universe exists.
- Therefore, the explanation of the universe’s existence is God.
The author wrote, “As with all such logical arguments, if the premises are true (points 1-3), then the conclusion must be true (point 4). The question is whether or not the first three points are more likely to be true than they are false.“
“Certainly, everyone would agree that the universe exists, so at least we are safe with point number 3.
But what about points 1 and 2? Is it accurate to say that everything that exists has an explanation for its existence and that the sole explanation for the existence of the universe is God?“
Furthermore, the author opined that Leibniz’s Argument “uses the very existence of the universe as a means to show that there must be an uncaused cause of all things. It argues that there must be a Creator of the universe. There must be a God.”
However, from the Buddhist perspective, one must first ask a fundamental question: “Is making assumptions necessary when discussing the origin of the universe?”
Scientists make assumptions, and philosophers argue on a priori grounds because their knowledge comes from inferentially connected word-based knowledge. However, as Dr. Kuhn understood, while inferentially connected word-based knowledge informs how “everything is related to something else,” it provides “no foundation between what I believe and what the world really is. So, how do I know anything?” Without a foundation for understanding what the world really is, making assumptions becomes the necessary first step in the scientific method and in philosophical inquiries.
However, the phrase “thus I opine” does not appear in Buddhist sutras. Indeed, Buddhism is not a philosophical dissertation based on the Buddha’s personal assumptions. Buddha does not need to make assumptions because his understanding of reality comes from direct perception and becoming part of nature. Without assumptions, logical arguments are unnecessary.
An unavoidable problem with making assumptions is that they necessarily exclude other options, no matter how reasonable they seem to those who use inferentially connected word-based knowledge to understand the world.
- For example, by assuming that his God created the universe, Leibniz ruled out the possibility that the universe was not created but manifested from a reality inconceivable to humanity, yet made visible through human observation.
- Indeed, according to the Buddha, that reality is mentality.
- Furthermore, by limiting the origin of the universe to something “non-physical and immaterial” and assuming it must be God, Leibniz excludes the possibility that the origin is indeed “non-physical and immaterial” but not God.
- Indeed, according to the Buddha’s teaching in Mohe Zhiguan, the material that gives rise to the universe is mentality, which is “non-physical and immaterial.”
- By theorizing that the “uncaused cause of all things” must be God, Leibniz excluded the possibility that the “uncaused cause of all things” is not God, but nature itself.
- Indeed, as the Buddha teaches in Such is the Way of Dharma, mentality is the “uncaused cause of all things” because it is eternal and has existed since time immemorial.
Indeed, while making assumptions to start a thesis may seem reasonable to those limited to word-based knowledge, it is unnecessary if direct perception is the means of knowledge. As discussed in previous posts, using direct perception allows the Buddha to teach in the Mohe Zhiguan that only two phenomena exist in the cosmos: Citta and Rupa, and they are mental. Furthermore, the Buddha teaches that mentality is inconceivable, meaning that neither Citta nor Rupa can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched. In other words, to humanity, they appear as “Nothing.”
However, as discussed in the Five Aggregates, that invisible “Nothing” becomes the visible “Something” through the conceptualization process that occurs “in ways humans do not govern” during observation. In other words, observation changes the invisible “Nothing” into the visible “Something,” and it happens without anyone being aware of it.
Therefore, “There Is Something Rather Than Nothing” because of human observation. If you are interested in knowing why the universe is observer-dependent, please visit the posts entitled “The Five Aggregates – The Origin Of An Observer-Dependent Universe.”
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