Why is there something rather than nothing? Quantum mechanics may hold a radical answer — not through mechanism, but through the idea that “possibles” are not things at all. Theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman argues that measurement itself converts non-substance into actuality, dissolving the boundary between nothing and something.
Stuart Kauffman is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher, Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania and faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute. A MacArthur Fellow, he is best known for his work on self-organization and the origin of life, and is the author of At Home in the Universe and Reinventing the Sacred.
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Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
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0:00 Why is there something rather than nothing?
0:13 What is nothing? Starting with possibles
1:03 Quantum superposition and Aristotle’s excluded middle
1:25 Heisenberg’s potentia — possibles are not substances
2:01 Measurement converts possibles to actuals
2:17 RLK challenges — is potentia really nothing?
3:15 The problem of mechanism in quantum measurement
3:49 Conway-Kochen free will theorem — the electron decides
5:01 Wheeler’s higgledy-piggledy and the space of laws
6:33 Six levels of nothingness
6:51 Can laws emerge without assuming laws?
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