Nothing
Nothing, no-thing, or no thing is when there is not anything. It is the opposite of something. It is also an antithesis (complete opposite) of everything. The idea of nothing has been debated in philosophy since the 5th century BCE. Early Greek philosophers said it was impossible for nothing to "exist". The atomists said there could be nothing, but only between the spaces between atoms. For them, however, all space was filled with atoms. Aristotle thought that there is matter and there is space. He said that space is an object that matter can be placed in. This became the norm for modern scientist, like Isaac Newton. However, some philosophers, like René Descartes, still argued that there was no empty space. These arguments continued until the discovery of a physical vacuum.
Existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger make a connection between nothing and consciousness. Some writers have made connections between Heidegger's idea of nothing and the nirvana of Eastern religions.
Modern science does not say a vacuum is nothing. In quantum field theory, a vacuum has many virtual particles.[2][3] The quantum vacuum can be called a modern aether theory.
Related pages
[change | change source]Citations
[change | change source]- ↑ Harary, Frank; Read, Ronald C. (1974). "Is the null-graph a pointless concept?". Graphs and Combinatorics. Vol. 406. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg. p. 37–44. doi:10.1007/bfb0066433. ISBN 978-3-540-06854-9. Retrieved 2025-10-26.
- ↑ Lincoln, Don (16 February 2023). ""Nothing" doesn't exist. Instead, there is "quantum foam" - When you combine the Uncertainty Principle with Einstein's famous equation, you get a mind-blowing result: Particles can come from nothing". Big Think. Retrieved 18 February 2023.
- ↑ Siegel, Ethan (22 December 2022). "The 4 fundamental meanings of "nothing" in science - All the things that surround and compose us didn't always exist. But describing their origin depends on what 'nothing' means". Big Think. Retrieved 18 February 2023.
References
[change | change source]- Hsu, Jong-Ping (2000). Einstein's Relativity and Beyond: New Symmetry Approaches. World Scientific. ISBN 9812813489.
- Milonni, Peter W. (2013). The Quantum Vacuum: An Introduction to Quantum Electrodynamics. Academic Press. ISBN 0080571492.
- Pieper, Josef; Wald, Berthold (2006). For the Love of Wisdom: Essays on the Nature of Philosophy. Translated by Roger Wasserman. Ignatius Press. ISBN 1-58617-087-2.
- Russell, Bertrand (1995). History of Western Philosophy. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-07854-7.
- Schaffner, Kenneth F. (2016). Nineteenth-Century Aether Theories. Elsevier. ISBN 1483158284.
- Whittaker, Edmund Taylor (1910). A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity from the age of Descrates to the Close of the Ninenteenth Century. London: Longmans Green & Co. OCLC 940279834.
Further reading
[change | change source]- "Lawrence Krauss :In Search of Nothing". 52-insights.com. 12 January 2016.
Other websites
[change | change source]
Media related to Nothing at Wikimedia Commons- Nothingness entry by Roy Sorensen in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Oliver, Simon. "Creation and Science". Bibledex Verses. Brady Haran for the University of Nottingham.
