I haven't read it yet. But Hawking has a new book "The Grand Design" coming out. From Wikipedia: "Hawking wrote... that "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."[57][58]"
I don't see how this gets us past the "and then a miracle occurs" stage of explanation. Of course, it is good he is breaking the taboo about speculating on the origin of existence. They say he is a smart guy, and maybe there is more in the book...
The universe is a big extrapolation on “The existence of this statement is logically inevitable.”
ReplyDeleteThe universe is a big extrapolation of “The existence of this statement is logically inevitable.”
ReplyDeleteThe statement is not just necessary (satisfied in every possible world). It is reliable: it cannot be uttered falsely, like “I am here now”, even if the latter is contingent.
The idea is that if it could be that “The existence of this statement is logically inevitable” then it is.
It is more logically inevitable than nothingness.
For existence, then, it may be there is a kind of ambient math. But it is not clear that math is an assumption, or if it is just a way or mode or what-have-you that precedes even existence.