The Great Riddle of Being: A Guided Tour of Jim Holt's "Why Does the World Exist?"

Close your eyes and imagine that the entire world around you has disappeared. Then imagine that even you – your body and mind – have completely vanished. If you can do that, the result will be Absolute Nothingness: no matter, no energy, not even empty space. Now you can open your eyes again and return to the reassuring presence of familiar things, shapes, colors, and sounds. But once you realize how easy it is to picture Nothing, a slightly unsettling question may occur to you: why is there something rather than nothing? What or who has brought our world into being, and why? In his bestseller Jim Holt attacks these metaphysical questions from various angles, enlisting help from philosophy, theology, physics, math, and even literature. This short summary offers you a guided tour of some of the central topics discussed by Holt. In less than two hours you will be able to see for yourself how to solve one of the greatest riddles of being.