We would be pleased to receive responses from academics and researchers to the questions. The responses will help us present current ideas among the academic community regarding these questions.

We are grateful to everyone who can take time to write a reply. Replies will be credited and will also appear online unless otherwise requested. Respondents can edit or withdraw their response at anytime.

1. Why is there something rather than nothing?

Some people wonder whether this question is actually meaningful and may not in fact be a non-starter. Parmenides concluded that “nothingness” or “non-being” was impossible and that things had always existed unchangingly (in order to avoid an infinite regress. According to him no first cause for either matter or motion is possible and therefore everything exists eternally and unchangingly.

Some physicists and other thinkers believe that a response is possible to this question, which Leibniz termed the “Primordial Existential Question”, whether it is to explain why/how something can come from nothing or that something has always existed.

Please write your views on this question, perhaps also indicating the following

• Is it meaningful?
• Can it be definitively answered one day?
• What are the philosophical implications in either of the cases of it being answered or not answered?
• Any suggestions for an answer, however outlandish?

Please send responses to info@parmenideum.com with name, position and institute

Responses can be read here

2. Why do 2 + 2 = 4?

This question refers to the more general problem of necessity. Why are there necessary truths such as those of mathematics? From where do the constraints of logical necessity come from and where do they reside even when there is no physical reality to instantiate them?

• In your view, is there an answer to this question?
• Is it important and why?
• Any suggestions for an answer, however outlandish?

Please send responses to info@parmenideum.com with name, position and institute

Responses can be read here

Note. The question does not ask “is the proposition 2 + 2 = 4 true?” That has already been shown by Russell and Whitehead in their famous proof.