1. What is Potentialism?

“What is the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything?”

“42.”

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams.

I’m often reminded of this particular book when I am asked to explain Potentialism. In the Douglas Adams comedy, a giant computer was created to answer the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. It returned the answer of 42. The punchline of the book was that the actual question wasn’t known, so the answer made no sense.

This is the crux of Potentialism. Science sometimes runs in circles trying to solve a problem without really understanding the question. We describe how things are and how they got to here. Yet, we rarely stop to ponder the reason why anything exists in the first place. Without that crucial first piece of information, things tend to make little sense.

Consider the question – What came first? 18

The Big Bang?

Surely, that is the beginning. After all, what can possibly exist before nothing? To a physicist, this makes good sense. For Potentialism, though, this is entirely incorrect. What came first was Potential.

David Birnbaum laid the groundwork for a new metaphysics with the simple statement that something must have the Potential to exist before it can exist. While it may seem a simple word game, taking it literally has far-reaching implications.

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