TY - JOUR AU - Lamża, Łukasz PY - 2014/06/24 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Why is there a lot of things rather than almost nothing? – weak Leibniz’s question JF - Philosophical Problems in Science (Zagadnienia Filozoficzne w Nauce) JA - ZFN VL - 0 IS - 55 SE - Articles DO - UR - https://zfn.edu.pl/index.php/zfn/article/view/37 SP - 91-127 AB - <p>The original Leibniz’s question „Why is there something rather than nothing?” is rephrased in a „weak” way: „Why is there a lot of things rather than almost nothing?”. The first part of the article argues for two propositions: 1) We may not reasonably expect a real answer to the original Leibniz’s question, mostly because the concept of „nothingness” cannot be defined in a way that makes sense and is operational. 2) The „weak” version of the question retains the philosophical „spirit” of the original.</p><p>In the second part a methodology for answering the weak Leibniz’s question is presented - one of an analysis of the cosmic evolution in terms of the reasons and causes for the emergence of new types of natural objects and processes („things”). A representation the structure of the Universe is presented that is based on a list of ca. 900 names of things derived from the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) catalogue, representing all natural sciences.</p><p>Further analyses concern the properties of the Universe and its evolution that cause new things to emerge all the time - although one may imagine and precisely describe a scenario where new things stopped appearing shortly after the Big Bang and now there is almost nothing in the Universe.</p> ER -