Read Online Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt - Free Book Online
Authors: Jim Holt
Tags: Fiction, thriller, science, Crime, Mystery, Retail, Literature, USA, Philosophy, Amazon.com, 21st Century, Religious Studies, v.5, Scientism, American Literature
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question Why is there a world rather than nothing at all? was not a path to God or to anything else. It was, to borrow a term from his native German, a Scheinproblem —a pseudo-problem.
What made Grünbaum such a fierce rejectionist? I could understand why someone might think the mystery of existence was, by its very nature, insoluble. But to laugh it off as a pseudo-problem seemed a bit too cavalier. Still, if Grünbaum turned out to be right, the whole quest to explain the existence of the world would be a colossal waste of effort, a fool’s errand. Why bother trying to solve a mystery when you can simply dissolve it? Why go on a hunt for a Snark if all that’s out there is a Boojum?
So, not without trepidation, I wrote back to Grünbaum. Could we chat? He responded with characteristic brio, inviting me to come see him in Pittsburgh, where he has lived and taught for the last five decades. He’d be delighted to explain why the mystery of existence was a nonstarter, he said in his letter, even if it took a few days to convince me. When it came to his philosophical tutelage, I could “write my own ticket.”
I had never been to Pittsburgh, a city I knew only from the movie Flashdance . But I was eager to meet Grünbaum, and to see the Monongahela River. So I caught the first flight I could from New York and, a couple of hours later, checked into a chain hotel that conveniently stood in the shadow of the University of Pittsburgh’s soaring neo-Gothic Cathedral of Learning. My eager mentor Grünbaum was waiting for me in the lobby when I arrived, grinning amiably and looking like an octogenarian cross between Danny DeVito and Edward G. Robinson.
That evening, over drinks and dinner at a downtown Pittsburgh restaurant called the Common Plea, Grünbaum told me about the origins of his antipathy to theism. He traced it back to his childhood in Cologne, Germany, where he was born in 1923, during the tumultuous era of the Weimar Republic. Cologne, with its famous cathedral, was a predominantly Roman Catholic city. Grünbaum’s family was part of a small Jewish minority, numbering around twelve thousand. They lived on Rubensstrasse, a street named after the Dutch painter. By the time Grünbaum was ten, the Nazis had come to power. He vividly recalls being beaten up in the street by young thugs who announced to him that die Juden haben unseren Heiland getötet —“the Jews killed our Savior.” He also recalls his athletic development being “psychologically stunted” because of the close association between Nazi mass rallies and athletic parades.
While still a boy, Grünbaum began to doubt the existence of God. He was repelled by the “ethically monstrous” biblical story in which Abraham is called on to sacrifice his innocent son as a test of his fealty to God. He found it absurd that there was a taboo against mentioning the name of God, Yehovah. When he blithely pronounced the word out loud in Hebrew class, the teacher pounded the table and told him it was the worst thing a Jew could do.
Grünbaum’s disenchantment with religion, he told me, coincided with the beginnings of his interest in philosophy. The rabbi at the family’s synagogue often alluded to Kant and Hegel in his sermons. Grünbaum was motivated to pick up an introductory book about philosophy, which, among other speculations, dealt with the origin of the universe. He also began to read Schopenhauer, admiring the philosopher both for his compassionate atheistic Buddhism and for his literary flair. By the time of Grünbaum’s bar mitzvah in 1936, at the age of thirteen, he was a confirmed atheist. The next year, his family escaped Nazi Germany for the United States, fetching up in a neighborhood in southern Brooklyn. Grünbaum commuted to high school in the Bronx—an hour and a half each way on the subway—where he mastered English by means of a bilingual edition of Shakespeare’s plays.
Drafted into the army during the Second World War,
What made Grünbaum such a fierce rejectionist? I could understand why someone might think the mystery of existence was, by its very nature, insoluble. But to laugh it off as a pseudo-problem seemed a bit too cavalier. Still, if Grünbaum turned out to be right, the whole quest to explain the existence of the world would be a colossal waste of effort, a fool’s errand. Why bother trying to solve a mystery when you can simply dissolve it? Why go on a hunt for a Snark if all that’s out there is a Boojum?
So, not without trepidation, I wrote back to Grünbaum. Could we chat? He responded with characteristic brio, inviting me to come see him in Pittsburgh, where he has lived and taught for the last five decades. He’d be delighted to explain why the mystery of existence was a nonstarter, he said in his letter, even if it took a few days to convince me. When it came to his philosophical tutelage, I could “write my own ticket.”
I had never been to Pittsburgh, a city I knew only from the movie Flashdance . But I was eager to meet Grünbaum, and to see the Monongahela River. So I caught the first flight I could from New York and, a couple of hours later, checked into a chain hotel that conveniently stood in the shadow of the University of Pittsburgh’s soaring neo-Gothic Cathedral of Learning. My eager mentor Grünbaum was waiting for me in the lobby when I arrived, grinning amiably and looking like an octogenarian cross between Danny DeVito and Edward G. Robinson.
That evening, over drinks and dinner at a downtown Pittsburgh restaurant called the Common Plea, Grünbaum told me about the origins of his antipathy to theism. He traced it back to his childhood in Cologne, Germany, where he was born in 1923, during the tumultuous era of the Weimar Republic. Cologne, with its famous cathedral, was a predominantly Roman Catholic city. Grünbaum’s family was part of a small Jewish minority, numbering around twelve thousand. They lived on Rubensstrasse, a street named after the Dutch painter. By the time Grünbaum was ten, the Nazis had come to power. He vividly recalls being beaten up in the street by young thugs who announced to him that die Juden haben unseren Heiland getötet —“the Jews killed our Savior.” He also recalls his athletic development being “psychologically stunted” because of the close association between Nazi mass rallies and athletic parades.
While still a boy, Grünbaum began to doubt the existence of God. He was repelled by the “ethically monstrous” biblical story in which Abraham is called on to sacrifice his innocent son as a test of his fealty to God. He found it absurd that there was a taboo against mentioning the name of God, Yehovah. When he blithely pronounced the word out loud in Hebrew class, the teacher pounded the table and told him it was the worst thing a Jew could do.
Grünbaum’s disenchantment with religion, he told me, coincided with the beginnings of his interest in philosophy. The rabbi at the family’s synagogue often alluded to Kant and Hegel in his sermons. Grünbaum was motivated to pick up an introductory book about philosophy, which, among other speculations, dealt with the origin of the universe. He also began to read Schopenhauer, admiring the philosopher both for his compassionate atheistic Buddhism and for his literary flair. By the time of Grünbaum’s bar mitzvah in 1936, at the age of thirteen, he was a confirmed atheist. The next year, his family escaped Nazi Germany for the United States, fetching up in a neighborhood in southern Brooklyn. Grünbaum commuted to high school in the Bronx—an hour and a half each way on the subway—where he mastered English by means of a bilingual edition of Shakespeare’s plays.
Drafted into the army during the Second World War,
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