Why Does the World Exist? An Answer in Three Statements
Translated by AI. Read the Chinese original ↗
Contents 3 sections
Why does the world exist?
—A narrative of the universe’s emergence
1: State
Emptiness is nothing; emptiness is everything; emptiness is every possibility, not merely a finite set.
2: Trigger
If the world contained nothing, it would contain no laws, because laws belong to the category of existence. Without laws, everything would be possible. If everything were possible, “nothing at all” would be impossible. Thus supposing the world contains nothing leads to the conclusion that nothingness is impossible; a world containing nothing is self-contradictory. Therefore, things must exist in the world.
3: Nature
“Pure being”—the purely abstract concept of existence—has no determinate qualities or content, so it is essentially “emptiness.” This emptiness is entirely identical to “pure nothing”—the purely abstract concept of nonexistence.