Why Does the World Exist? - by Jim Holt
"But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?"
- William Shakespeare. “Hamlet.” Act 3, Scene 1,
Page 3
What would it take to explain the universe’s existence? When it comes to every day events, finding a prior cause or at least where to look for one is almost trivial. Just imagine that your PC fails to turn on. Without giving it any thought, you would check if it was plugged in correctly and then see if everything was connected. The cause would be in the neighborhood of the PC itself, existing in time and nonrandom. The same cannot be said to apply to theories about the existence of our world.
