Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing

Rundle, Bede

ISBN 10: 0199270503 / ISBN 13: 9780199270507

Published by Clarendon Press, Oxford UK, 2005

About this Item

Hardcover with glossy boards, 204 pages. Why should there be anything at all? Why, in particular, should a material world exist? Bede Rundle advances clear, non-technical answers to these perplexing questions. If, as the theist maintains, God is a being who cannot but exist, his existence explains why there is something rather than nothing. However, this can also be explained on the basis of a weaker claim. Not that there is some particular being that has to be, but simply that there has to be something or other. Rundle proffers arguments for thinking that that is indeed how the question is to be put to rest. Traditionally, the existence of the physical universe is held to depend on God, but the theist faces a major difficulty in making clear how a being outside space and time, as God is customarily conceived to be, could stand in an intelligible relation to the world, whether as its creator or as the author of events within it. Rundle argues that a creator of physical reality is not required, since there is no alternative to its existence. There has to be something, and a physical universe is the only real possibility. He supports this claim by eliminating rival contenders; he dismisses the supernatural, and argues that, while other forms of being, notably the abstract and the mental, are not reducible to the physical, they presuppose its existence. Name, date on front fly leaf. Light pencil marking to about 20 pages. Record # 386538.

Seller Inventory # 386538

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing
• Publisher: Clarendon Press, Oxford UK
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199270503
• ISBN 13: 9780199270507
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

The question "Why is there something rather than nothing"? has a strong claim to be philosophy's central, and most perplexing, question; it has a capacity to set the head spinning which few other philosophical problems can rival. Bede Rundle challenges the stalemate between theistic and naturalistic explanations with a rigorous, properly philosophical approach, and presents some startlingly novel conclusions.

About the Author

Bede Rundle is at Trinity College, University of Oxford.