Rundle, Bede

Bede is emeritus lecture of philosophy, University of Oxford, specializing in philosophy of language and metaphysics. He is the author of Why there is Something rather than Nothing, which argues for a distinctively philosophical explanation of existence, as opposed to a physical or theological kind. The question, \"Why is there something rather than nothing?\", has been rightly called philosophy\'s deepest and most mystifying question. Why should there should be anything at all? When one thinks about, it would seem to be almost absurd that there is not Nothing. On its face, that there should be nothing seems so much more logical, so much easier to suppose, than that there should be something. Nothing seems so much simpler and so much more natural than Something. And, if we know anything, we know there is something. Bede’s claim is that while Nothing might indeed have been a logical possibility, we do have Something, so that what we see as that Something, which is the matter and energy of our universe, not some ethereal God or some such, is the best candidate for that which has always existed in some form or another.