Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?

by Tim Sommers 作者 Tim Sommers

Most of the evidence available to us suggests that there is something.
我们掌握的大多数证据表明，这是有原因的。

There are probably electrons and other fundamental particles, as well as fields and fundamental forces, likely there are planets, stars, black holes, and galaxies, and there are probably even, what Quine called, “medium-sized” objects: tables, chairs, dogs, and us.
可能有电子和其他基本粒子，以及场和基本力，可能有行星、恒星、黑洞和星系，甚至可能还有奎因所说的“中等大小”的物体：桌子、椅子、狗和我们。

As far as I understand it, however, there is nothing that we know of that couldn’t not exist or go out of existence – including electrons. Although, an electron’s lifespan is long – something like 66,000 yottayears. (I know, I know yottayears sound made up, but it’s 10 ²⁸ years.) This is a much longer life span than the life span of the universe itself – which won’t extend to more than 100 trillion years or so.
然而，据我所知，我们所知道的任何东西都不可能不存在或不存在——包括电子。虽然，电子的寿命很长——大约 66,000 yottayears。（我知道，我知道 yottayears 听起来是编造的，但这是 10 ²⁸ 年。这比宇宙本身的寿命要长得多——宇宙本身的寿命不会超过 100 万亿年左右。

Anyway, if every single thing could not exist, then everything could not exist all at once, and so there would and could be nothing. And if there could be nothing, why isn’t there nothing? Existing is more complicated – and energy intensive – than not existing, so, it would seem that the universe would tend towards nothing.
无论如何，如果每一件事都不存在，那么一切都不可能同时存在，因此将会有，也可能什么都没有。如果什么都没有，为什么什么都没有呢？存在比不存在更复杂——也更耗能——因此，宇宙似乎会趋向于虚无。

On the other hand, when I said that the lifetime of the universe, though long, is finite, I was following cosmologists who don’t really mean that the universe will literally go out of existence eventually. They mean that the universe will undergo heat death.
另一方面，当我说宇宙的寿命虽然很长，但却是有限的时，我是在追随宇宙学家，他们并不是真的意味着宇宙最终会消失。他们的意思是宇宙将经历热寂。

Everything interesting thing about the universe – including life and information – is a result of energy gradients. They cool your coffee, make your computer compute, and create waterfalls. Energy gradients make stuff happen.
宇宙中所有有趣的事物——包括生命和信息——都是能量梯度的结果。它们冷却您的咖啡，让您的计算机进行计算，并创建瀑布。能量梯度使事情发生。

Energy gradients exist wherever two points sufficiently proximate to one another have different levels of energy, causing the energy to flow from the more energetic point to the less energetic point. Energy gradients, in action, eliminate themselves by spreading their energy out more evenly. Entropy is the measure of this process. Energy gradients push the universe towards a state where everything is distributed uniformly and nothing interesting can ever happen again. Heat death.
只要彼此足够接近的两个点具有不同的能量水平，就会存在能量梯度，从而导致能量从能量较高的点流向能量较低的点。能量梯度在起作用，通过更均匀地分散能量来消除自身。熵是这个过程的量度。能量梯度将宇宙推向一种状态，在这种状态中，一切都均匀分布，并且不会再发生任何有趣的事情。热寂。

However, the point is that heat death is not itself, literally, the end of the universe. Nevertheless, if the fundamental particles have finite life-spans, no matter how long, the universe as a whole will eventually experience heat death and then, some time later, go out of existence entirely.*
然而，关键是热寂本身并不是宇宙的终结。然而，如果基本粒子的寿命是有限的，那么无论多长时间，整个宇宙最终都会经历热寂，然后在一段时间后完全消失。

Nothing is coming. And nothing can come from nothing. As Heidegger put it, “The Nothing Nothings.” So, once there is nothing, the conventional wisdom goes, there can’t ever be anything again.
什么都没有。没有什么是无中生有的。正如海德格尔所说，“无物”。所以，传统智慧认为，一旦什么都没有，就再也不会有任何东西了。

If there being nothing is easier, or more likely, than there being something, and if there has ever been nothing – even for one zeptosecond (the shortest length of time ever measured, 10^-21) – and if it’s true that there can’t be something after that, how did we all end up in this brief flash of something? Luck? Anthropic principle (we could only be in a universe where there is something…)? Or God?
如果有没有比有某物更容易或更有可能的事物，如果曾经什么都没有——即使是一泽托秒（有史以来测量的最短时间长度，10^-21）——如果真的在那之后不可能有某物，那么我们是如何在这短暂的闪现中结束的呢？运气？人为原则（我们只能在一个有东西的宇宙中......）？还是上帝？

You know the trouble with God, of course – I mean in this particular situation, at least. What good is it to explain why there is something by reference to God when explaining why (how?) God came into existence is, if anything, harder since God is causally more opaque and more complicated than, well, everything?
当然，你知道 神的麻烦 – 我是说，至少在这种特殊情况下是这样。在解释为什么（如何）时，通过引用上帝来解释为什么有某事有什么用呢？如果有什么不同的话，上帝的存在是更难的，因为上帝在因果关系上比万物更不透明、更复杂？

Of course, maybe it’s just a brute fact that there is something rather than nothing. Bertrand Russell said the universe “is just there and that’s all.” “Reasons,” his one-time pupil Wittgenstein said, “must come to an end somewhere.”
当然，也许这只是一个残酷的事实，即有东西而不是什么都没有。伯特兰·罗素 （Bertrand Russell） 说，宇宙“就在那里，仅此而已”。“原因，”他曾经的学生维特根斯坦说，“必须在某个地方结束。

Or maybe the question is meaningless. Steven Hawking said asking what there was before the Big Bang is like asking “What is north of the North Pole?”
或者，也许这个问题毫无意义。史蒂文·霍金（Steven Hawking）说，问大爆炸之前有什么，就像问“北极以北是什么”一样。

On the other hand, maybe it’s just unanswerable why there is something rather than nothing, not because it is a brute fact or meaningless question, but because it is outside of our actual and possible experience.
另一方面，也许只是无法回答为什么有东西而不是没有，不是因为它是一个残酷的事实或无意义的问题，而是因为它超出了我们的实际和可能的经验。

In Robert Ottum’s “ Ado About Nothing ” two astronauts discover a wall at the end of the universe – and a sign that says, “Obviously you are not convinced that this is the end of the universe. If you will place a quarter in the slot below, the peep-hole will open, and you can see for yourself.” When one astronaut asks the other what he saw his answer is, of course, “Nothing.”
在罗伯特·奥图姆 （Robert Ottum） 的《无事生非》中，两名宇航员在宇宙的尽头发现了一堵墙——还有一个标牌，上面写着：“显然你不相信这是宇宙的尽头。如果你在下面的槽里放四分之一，窥视孔就会打开，你自己就能看到了。当一名宇航员问另一名宇航员他看到了什么时，他的回答当然是“什么都没有”。

Call that being outside of our experience in the mundane sense.
在世俗意义上，称之为在我们的经验之外的存在。

There’s also a Kantian sense in which the question of why there is something rather than nothing might be outside of our experience. Kant says time and space are a priori forms of intuition. Roughly, they are structures we impose and through which we perceive the world, not possible objects of experience themselves. Time and space make it possible to process and understand our experiences, but the things-in-themselves are beyond our experience and, ultimately, always a mystery to us. I guess, from the Kantian point of view, if we don’t really know anything about space and time, we also don’t know anything about how everything came into existence or why there is something rather than nothing.
还有一种康德意义上，为什么有东西而不是没有的问题可能超出了我们的经验范围。康德说，时间和空间是直觉的先验形式。粗略地说，它们是我们强加的结构，我们通过这些结构来感知世界，而不是可能的经验对象本身。时间和空间使处理和理解我们的经历成为可能，但事物本身超出了我们的经验，最终对我们来说永远是一个谜。我想，从康德的角度来看，如果我们真的对空间和时间一无所知，我们也不知道万物是如何存在的，或者为什么有东西而不是什么都没有。

Brian Leftow argues that since there can’t be a causal explanation of why there is something rather than nothing, because, you know, infinite regress, turtles all the way down, etc. – then it must be the case that something must exist necessarily. I get the first part (no causal explanation because you need an infinite chain of causes), but I don’t know why that leads to something must necessarily exist.
布莱恩·莱夫托 （Brian Leftow） 认为，既然无法用因果解释来解释为什么有东西而不是什么都没有，因为，你知道，无限回归，一路向下，等等——那么一定是某种东西必须存在。我明白第一部分（没有因果解释，因为你需要一个无限的原因链），但我不知道为什么这会导致某件事必须存在。

Maybe, this would help. Some people argue that numbers, math, and logic necessarily exist. We even call some things necessary truths, though I’m not sure that’s really what that means. (If this helps, contemporary logicians and metaphysicians tend to say a necessary truth is something that is true in all possible worlds. (Yeah. I didn’t think that would help.))
也许，这会有所帮助。有些人认为数字、数学和逻辑必然存在。我们甚至称某些事物为必然真理，尽管我不确定这真的是什么意思。（如果这有帮助的话，当代逻辑学家和形而上学家倾向于说，必然的真理是在所有可能的世界里都是真实的。（是的。我不认为这会有帮助。

But even though mathematical objects can get along without something to be true about, it’s not clear how they can bring anything else into existence. If physical analogues of triangles (which, of course, are fundamentally mathematical objects only approximately duplicated by any physical object) exist, we will already know that their interior angles will add up to 180 degrees. However, that won’t bring actual, physical triangle analogues about.
但是，即使数学对象可以在没有真实事物的情况下相处，也不清楚它们如何使其他事物存在。如果存在三角形的物理类似物（当然，从根本上说，三角形是数学对象，只是被任何物理对象大致复制）存在，我们就已经知道它们的内角加起来将达到 180 度。然而，这不会带来实际的、物理的三角形类似物。

Parmenides, the coolest of pre-Socratic philosophers, argued that since nothing is nothing, and nothing comes from nothing, nothing does not – and cannot – exist. If he had lived a little later, I think this might have been called Sophistry. Or maybe that’s just me.
巴门尼德是前苏格拉底时期最冷静的哲学家，他认为，既然没有就是无，而且没有来自无，那么没有就不存在——也不可能——存在。如果他活得晚一点，我想这可能被称为诡辩。或者也许这就是我。

On the other hand, Frank Wilczek, who won the Nobel Prize in physics, said “nothing is unstable” and so something is bound to happen. Sean Carroll argues that even if this accounts for the existence of matter, it doesn’t account for the existence of the universe as a whole. Still, it looks like progress to me.
另一方面，诺贝尔物理学奖获得者弗兰克·维尔切克 （Frank Wilczek） 说“没有什么是不稳定的”，因此必然会发生一些事情。肖恩·卡罗尔 （Sean Carroll） 认为，即使这解释了物质的存在，它也不能解释整个宇宙的存在。尽管如此，在我看来，这似乎是进步。

Hawking and Lawrence Krauss say that quantum mechanics, with its vacuum states, virtual particles, and spacetime bubbles, implies that in our universe things do spontaneously come into existence out of nothing. Beyond the math, there is some actual evidence for this. So, other cosmologists may be coming around to the possibility that the universe did come into existence out of nothing.
霍金和劳伦斯·克劳斯说，量子力学及其真空态、虚拟粒子和时空气泡意味着在我们的宇宙中，事物确实是自发地从无到有地存在的。除了数学之外，还有一些实际证据可以证明这一点。因此，其他宇宙学家可能会意识到宇宙确实是凭空出现的可能性。

Some cosmologists, on the other hand, have argued that this isn’t really something coming out of nothing because it assumes that the laws of nature already existed before the universe. Hence, even before the physical universe began there wasn’t nothing there. (Normally, that clause – “there wasn’t nothing there” – would be ungrammatical. Deep questions threaten even grammar, I suppose.) Can the universe only come into existence if the laws of nature already exist?
另一方面，一些宇宙学家认为，这并不是真的无中生有，因为它假设自然法则在宇宙之前就已经存在。因此，甚至在物理宇宙开始之前，那里就不是任何东西都没有。（通常，该子句 – “there was not nothing there” – 是不符合语法的。我想，深奥的问题甚至威胁到语法。宇宙只有在自然法则已经存在的情况下才能存在吗？

I’ve written about this before. In my nonexpert opinion, there’s no need to presuppose that the laws of nature existed before the universe. The universe does not need to obey the laws of the universe. That’s just a metaphor. It’s the other way around. The laws of nature are a description of how the universe behaves.
我以前写过关于这一点的文章。在我看来，没有必要预设自然法则在宇宙之前就已经存在。宇宙不需要遵守宇宙的规律。这只是一个比喻。而是相反的。自然法则是对宇宙行为方式的描述。

So, when the universe comes into existence and does whatever it does, that’s no reason to think that what it is doing is following laws that existed before the universe. Those laws are about what the universe does after it comes into existence, not enforceable prohibitions on what the universe can or can’t do.
所以，当宇宙出现并做它所做的任何事情时，没有理由认为它所做的是遵循宇宙之前就存在的定律。这些定律是关于宇宙在存在后做什么，而不是对宇宙能做什么或不能做什么的可执行的禁令。

In terms of the original question, “why is there something rather than nothing?” that leaves us, surprisingly, at “Because something can come out of nothing.” Why or how exactly? I have no idea.
就最初的问题而言，“为什么有东西而不是没有”，这让我们出乎意料地回到了“因为某物可以从无到有”。为什么或究竟如何？我不知道。

Don’t care for this conclusion? Well, as Sidney Morgenbesser, an American Philosopher often described as New York’s “Sidewalk Socrates,” said, “Even if there was nothing, you still wouldn’t be satisfied!”
不在乎这个结论？正如美国哲学家西德尼·摩根贝瑟 （Sidney Morgenbesser） 经常被描述为纽约的“人行道苏格拉底”所说，“即使什么都没有，你仍然不会满意！

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*There are actually a number of other possible scenarios, some of which don’t have the universe going out of existence, but the most widely held is still heat death (or as it sometimes called) “ The Big Freeze.” Other scenarios include, “The Big Crunch” (the expansion of the universe slows and then collapses back into a singularity and, for the optimists out there, maybe, there is another Big Bang); “The Big Rip” (the acceleration of the universe continues until it tears apart everything, including individual particles and space-time itself); and Big “Quantum Vacuum Decay” (for the pessimists, at any moment a vacuum bubble could spontaneously appear and consume the whole universe). I just added the “Big” to Quantum Vacuum Decay. Sorry. I probably shouldn’t hassle physicists for overusing the word “big.” We are talking about the end of the entire universe, after all. (I don’t try to provide citations for all of these scenarios, but they are all readily available with a bit of googling.)
*实际上还有许多其他可能的情况，其中一些并没有宇宙消失，但最广泛持有的仍然是热寂（或有时称为）“大冻结”。其他情况包括，“大紧缩”（宇宙膨胀减慢，然后坍缩成一个奇点，对于乐观主义者来说，也许还有另一次大爆炸）;“The Big Rip”（宇宙的加速一直持续到它撕裂一切，包括单个粒子和时空本身）;和大的“量子真空衰变”（对于悲观主义者来说，真空气泡随时可能自发出现并吞噬整个宇宙）。我刚刚将 “Big” 添加到 Quantum Vacuum Decay 中。不好意思。我可能不应该因为过度使用“大”这个词而麻烦物理学家。毕竟，我们谈论的是整个宇宙的终结。（我不会试图为所有这些情况提供引用，但它们都可以通过谷歌搜索一下就很容易获得。

Bonus Sidney Morgenbesser story.
奖金 Sidney Morgenbesser 故事。

Supposedly the English philosopher of language J.L. Austin said to Morgenbesser that, while in most languages a double-negative means a positive, in no language does a double-positive mean a negative. To which Morgenbesser supposedly replied, “Yeah, yeah.”
据说英国语言哲学家 J.L. Austin 对 Morgenbesser 说，虽然在大多数语言中双重否定意味着积极，但在任何语言中，双重肯定都不意味着否定。“据说 Morgenbesser 回答说：”是的，是的。

normal 正常