I had a discussion this week with someone about the origin of life. Normally, I avoid these kinds of conversations for two reasons: (1) they go nowhere, accomplish little, and leave both parties no better off than when they started, and (2) I’m from New York, where not getting involved is the prime directive, to borrow a term from Star Trek. That principle served me well on the subway and navigating life in the Bronx. This time, however, I was less guarded — California sunshine has that effect on people — and I thought, What could go wrong?
There are a few directions a conversation like this can go. Ours went straight to the question, “Can something come from nothing?” I like to think of myself as logical without being rigid, so I sided with the fifth‑century BC Greek philosopher Parmenides and insisted that you simply can’t get something from nothing. It defies logic. Something must come from something else, even if that “something else” seems unrelated, tracing all the way back in an infinite regression to the origin of all things.
I include “nothing” in the category of “all things,” since nothing, technically, is something. What is it, you ask? It’s nothing. I take comfort here in Mr. Feynman’s conclusion that there is no such thing as nothing, because even “nothing” contains elemental forces of attraction and repulsion — which, of course, are something. I have now reached the limits of my knowledge of quantum field theory, from Parmenides to Feynman, but this should give you an idea of how the conversation went. If this surprises you, see reason (1) above. And I didn’t even bring in Aquinas or ex nihilo, preferring to keep them warming up in the bullpen if needed.
My conversation partner went with what I call the DuPont argument, which says that chemistry “brings good things to life.” DuPont spent the 1960s hailing chemistry and their products as delivering a better life to consumers. The more sophisticated version of that argument today revolves around something called “geochemistry” leading to “biochemistry,” which at first sounds like a college career plan. It basically holds that, in the beginning, molecules of hydrogen and helium formed in a gaseous mix that then burst into life.
I am not sure of the particulars, but I know this approach is championed by people like Nobel Prize winner James Rothman, whom I’ve heard speak at my university, the social‑media physicist Brian Cox, and Lawrence Krauss — all serious men thinking seriously about nothing. There’s even a chemist on YouTube named Lee Cronin who explains the “something‑from‑ nothing” position with great élan, which I find ironic, even amusing.
I am long past trying to gain points in a debate about abstractions. That may be an intellectual failure on my part or maybe a personality flaw. To be fair, it might just be age. I am often left unconvinced, sometimes even of my own opinion (see Anonymous Me). Maybe that’s because I have learned to appreciate logic and a line of reasoning regardless of the outcome. I am less and less invested in outcomes beyond my retirement portfolio, which is both abstract and concrete at the same time.
I seem to recall something from Martin Heidegger about the distinction between faith and reason and the inability of one to fathom the other. In other words, you can’t get to one place by taking the road that leads to the other. That makes sense, but then I think of my own faith tradition, which says you can certainly approach — even understand — God through reason. Otherwise, why were we given it?
Every time I see Brian Cox with his boyish looks explaining the Fermi Paradox or the unlikelihood of establishing a colony on Mars, I think of my ballroom dance instructor. Seriously. She was one of the most talented teachers I have ever known. She knew technique, movement, and that dynamism between partners. She also had a wicked tongue and a sarcastic streak so sharp she could slice you without leaving a trace of blood. I like to think she did it all with love. And, in fact, she did.
She was tougher on men than on women, because we are the leaders in the dance. She would warn us to make sure we were sending the right signals to our partners about steps, turns, distance, and direction. “Men, are you asking her to turn, release, return — what?” She told us that if we were not absolutely clear, our partners would not know what to do and the dance would be ruined. Basically, there was only one question worth asking about what we were communicating: Is it something, or is it nothing?
That is the question.
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