Something from Nothing

 I recent asked a correspondent the question, "Over 300 years ago Leibniz asked the question, 'Why is there something, rather than nothing?'. Scientists, psychologists, and philosophers have been trying to answer that question since. What is your best guess?

The response I received was, "why not"?.

I wrote back: "Actually, a brilliant response. Your question implies that an eternal power (the first cause), on a ‘why not?’ whim, brought the ‘something’ (a universe) into being. Heraclitus and Aristotle both believed that initial and continued existence was consistent with causality, that all events were the effects of previous causes. Many people still believe that, that first cause, that eternal power was/is an omniscient God. Of course, that doesn’t answer the why question. The scientific answer is that we, and the universe, just are. A more recent theory is that the universe and life and human potentiality always was, that there never was a ‘nothing’. Quantum mechanics demonstrates that ‘nothing’ is an impossibility."