ABSTRACT
In his biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Norman Malcolm reports:
He said that he sometimes had a certain experience which could best be described by saying that ‘when I have it, I wonder at the existence of the world. I am then inclined to use such phrases as ‘How extraordinary that anything should exist!’ or ‘How extraordinary that the world should exist!’
(1958: 56) This mystery, which, according to Aristotle, lay at the very root of philosophy, 1 is one which thoughtful naturalists cannot avoid. Derek Parfit, for example, agrees that ‘No question is more sublime than why there is a Universe: why there is anything rather than nothing’ (1998: 24).