The primary text. In §7 Leibniz states the principle of sufficient reason and asks why there is something rather than nothing; in §8 he argues the reason must lie in a necessary being, which he calls God.
“Given that principle, the first question we can fairly ask is: Why is there something rather than nothing? After all, nothing is simpler and easier than something.” source
Modernised translation; the translator marks his additions with dots and brackets. The 1714 date follows the chronology in the Stanford Encyclopedia's entry on Leibniz.
Official Catholic teaching on creation: God needs nothing pre-existing to create and creates freely ‘out of nothing’. Represents one religious tradition's answer, stated as faith.
“We believe that God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create, nor is creation any sort of necessary emanation from the divine substance.” source
Date is the promulgation of the Catechism (apostolic constitution Fidei Depositum, vatican.va). Other religious traditions answer differently; not covered here.
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Testimony
Interviews and witness statements: who, in what role, when and where it was said.
PRESSNPR, Talk of the Nation (interview by Ira Flatow) · 2012-01-13
Transcript of a radio interview in which Krauss presents his book: physics has changed what ‘nothing’ means, and quantum mechanics lets nothing create something.
“the question why is there something rather than nothing is really a scientific question, not a religious or philosophical question, because both nothing and something are scientific concepts” source
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Analysis
Our own reading of the file, written from the sources on the other sheets. Opinion is marked as such.
The question looks simple and is not. Leibniz framed it with a principle: if everything has a sufficient reason, so must the existence of anything at all, and that reason cannot lie inside the chain of things that need explaining. His conclusion, a necessary being, is the classic theological answer; Catholic teaching today likewise describes God creating freely ‘out of nothing’.
Physics entered the argument in the twentieth century. Quantum field theory shows that a vacuum is far from empty, and Krauss argued that this turns the question into a scientific one. The philosophers' objection is that the physicists have answered a different question: as Albert put it, vacuum states are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff, so a universe from a vacuum is not a universe from nothing. Carroll, a physicist, takes a third line: physics can show the universe may exist on its own without anything outside it, but at some point explanation stops at brute facts.
Our label is Unexplained because no approach is accepted by the others, and because it is unclear what evidence could decide between them. Some philosophers go further and doubt the question is well-formed, treating it as an expression of awe rather than a request for information. This file does not take sides on belief.
What it shows
That the question has a documented history from Leibniz (1714) to present-day physics and philosophy.
That leading physicists disagree among themselves: Krauss says physics answers it, Carroll says explanation ends in brute facts.
That philosophers have identified a specific gap in physical answers: a quantum vacuum is something, not nothing.
What it doesn't prove
That God exists or does not exist. The theological answer is a matter of faith and argument, not something this file can check.
That physics has solved the question. The disagreement over what ‘nothing’ means is unresolved.
That the question is meaningless. That is one philosophical position among several.
The other side
Krauss argues the label is outdated: the question is ‘really a scientific question, not a religious or philosophical question’, because physics has changed what ‘nothing’ means. Quantum mechanics shows that nothing is unstable and creates something all the time, so the existence of something is what physics expects. On this view the remaining disagreement is about words, not about the universe.
Why expect nothing? There is only one empty world and many populated ones, so ‘something’ is the likelier outcome (van Inwagen's argument, as discussed by Sorensen). [sep-nothingness]
Krauss: quantum mechanics makes nothing unstable, so something arises from it all the time. [krauss-npr-2012]
Leibniz: the sufficient reason must lie outside the chain of contingent things, in a necessary being; ‘that ultimate reason for things is what we call God’. [leibniz-1714]
Another view
Some philosophers doubt the question is well-formed and read it as a brute expression of awe. [sep-nothingness]
Carroll: physics may show the universe needs nothing outside it, but explanation must bottom out in brute facts. [carroll-2018]
Catholic teaching: God needs no pre-existent thing to create and creates freely ‘out of nothing’; stated as belief (‘We believe’). [catechism-296]
Open questions
Is ‘nothing’ a coherent state that could have obtained, or is the question empty?
Can physics ever answer it, or only push it back to the laws of physics themselves?
Must every fact have a sufficient reason, or can existence simply be a brute fact?
Other analyses
COMMENTARYRoy Sorensen, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · 2003-08-28
Peer-reviewed reference entry on nothingness, including the question why there is something rather than nothing, the statistical and subtraction arguments, and the dispute over physicists' answers. Quotes David Albert's 2012 review of Krauss. Substantive revision 28 February 2022.
“Why is there something rather than nothing? Well, why not? Why expect nothing rather than something?” source
COMMENTARYSean M. Carroll (arXiv; for the Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Physics) · 2018-02-06
A physicist's survey of possible answers. Carroll argues that modern physics allows the universe to exist as a self-contained system, but that any account must end in brute facts.
“It seems natural to ask why the universe exists at all.” source
Revised 4 June 2018 (v2).
TO VERIFY Candidates, not yet checked
David Albert, “On the Origin of Everything”, New York Times Sunday Book Review, March 2012: nytimes.com could not be opened in this session (blocked). Cited here only through the Stanford Encyclopedia entry, which quotes it.
Lawrence Krauss, A Universe from Nothing (Free Press, 2012): the publisher's page returned 403; the book's argument is cited from the NPR interview and the SEP entry.
Sean Carroll, “A Universe from Nothing?” (Cosmic Variance blog, Discover, 28 April 2012), listed in the SEP bibliography: not opened.
A non-Christian theological answer (Jewish, Islamic, Hindu or Buddhist) with an official or scholarly source, for balance in the Theology column.
Found, but not linked to a source we trust. Not on the sheets until they are.