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= Nothing =
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Introduction
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Nothing, no-thing, or no thing is the complete absence of 'anything',
as the opposite of 'something' and an antithesis of everything. The
concept of nothing has been a matter of philosophical debate since at
least the 5th century BCE. Early Greek philosophers argued that it was
impossible for 'nothing' to "exist". The atomists allowed 'nothing'
but only in the spaces between the invisibly small atoms. For them,
all space was filled with atoms. Aristotle took the view that there
exists matter and there exists space, a receptacle into which matter
objects can be placed. This became the paradigm for classical
scientists of the modern age like Isaac Newton. Nevertheless, some
philosophers, like René Descartes, continued to argue against the
existence of empty space until the scientific discovery of a physical
vacuum.
Existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger (as
interpreted by Sartre) have associated 'nothing' with consciousness.
Some writers have made connections between Heidegger's concept of
'nothing' and the nirvana of Eastern religions.
Modern science does not equate 'vacuum' with 'nothing'. The vacuum in
quantum field theory is filled with virtual particles. The quantum
vacuum is often viewed as a modern version of an aether theory.
Western
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Some would consider the study of "nothing" to be absurd. A typical
response of this type is voiced by the Venetian Giacomo Casanova in
conversation with his landlord, one Dr. Gozzi, who also happens to be
a priest:
"Nothingness" has been treated as a serious subject for a very long
time. In philosophy, to avoid linguistic traps over the meaning of
"nothing", a phrase such as 'not-being' is often employed to make
clear what is being discussed.
Parmenides
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One of the earliest Western philosophers to consider nothing as a
concept was Parmenides (5th century BCE), a Greek philosopher of the
monist school. He argued that "nothing" cannot exist by the following
line of reasoning: To speak of a thing, one has to speak of a thing
that exists. If one can speak of a thing in the past, this thing must
still exist (in some sense) now, and from this he concluded that there
is no such thing as change. As a corollary, there can be no such
things as 'coming-into-being', 'passing-out-of-being', or 'not-being'.
Other philosophers, for instance, Socrates and Plato largely agreed
with Parmenides's reasoning on nothing. Aristotle differs with
Parmenides's conception of nothing and says, "Although these opinions
seem to follow logically in a dialectical discussion, yet to believe
them seems next door to madness when one considers the facts."
In modern times, Albert Einstein's concept of spacetime has led many
scientists, including Einstein himself, to adopt a position remarkably
similar to Parmenides. On the death of his friend Michele Besso,
Einstein consoled his widow with the words, "Now he has departed from
this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For
those of us that believe in physics, the distinction between past,
present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
Leucippus
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Leucippus (early 5th century BCE), one of the atomists, along with
other philosophers of his time, made attempts to reconcile this monism
with the everyday observation of motion and change. He accepted the
monist position that there could be no motion without a void. The void
is the opposite of being. It is 'not-being'. On the other hand, there
exists something known as an absolute plenum, a space filled with
matter, and there can be no motion in a plenum because it is
completely full. But, there is not just one monolithic plenum, for
existence consists of a multiplicity of plenums. These are the
invisibly small "atoms" of Greek atomist theory, later expanded by
Democritus (c. 460-370 BCE), which allows the void to "exist" between
them. In this scenario, macroscopic objects can 'come-into-being',
move through space, and pass into 'not-being' by means of the coming
together and moving apart of their constituent atoms. The void must
exist to allow this to happen, or else the "frozen world" of
Parmenides must be accepted.
Bertrand Russell points out that this does not exactly defeat the
argument of Parmenides but, rather, ignores it by taking the rather
modern scientific position of starting with the observed data (motion,
etc.) and constructing a theory based on the data, as opposed to
Parmenides' attempts to work from pure logic. Russell also observes
that both sides were mistaken in believing that there can be no motion
in a plenum, but arguably motion cannot 'start' in a plenum. Cyril
Bailey notes that Leucippus is the first to say that a "thing" (the
void) might be real without being a body and points out the irony that
this comes from a materialistic atomist. Leucippus is therefore the
first to say that "nothing" has a reality attached to it.
Aristotle, Newton, Descartes
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Aristotle (384-322 BCE) provided the classic escape from the logical
problem posed by Parmenides by distinguishing things that are 'matter'
and things that are 'space'. In this scenario, space is not "nothing"
but, rather, a receptacle in which objects of matter can be placed.
The true void (as "nothing") is different from "space" and is removed
from consideration. This characterization of space reached its
pinnacle with Isaac Newton who asserted the existence of absolute
space. René Descartes, on the other hand, returned to a
Parmenides-like argument of denying the existence of space. For
Descartes, there was matter, and there was extension of matter leaving
no room for the existence of "nothing".
The idea that space can actually be empty was generally still not
accepted by philosophers who invoked arguments similar to the plenum
reasoning. Although Descartes' views on this were challenged by Blaise
Pascal, he declined to overturn the traditional belief, 'horror
vacui', commonly stated as "nature abhors a vacuum". This remained so
until Evangelista Torricelli invented the barometer in 1643 and showed
that an empty space appeared if the mercury tube was turned upside
down. This phenomenon being known as the Torricelli vacuum and the
unit of vacuum pressure, the torr, being named after him. Even
Torricelli's teacher, Galileo Galilei, had previously been unable to
adequately explain the sucking action of a pump.
John the Scot
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John the Scot, or Johannes Scotus Eriugena (c. 815-877) held many
surprisingly heretical beliefs for the time he lived in for which no
action appears ever to have been taken against him. His ideas mostly
stem from, or are based on his work of translating pseudo-Dionysius.
His beliefs are essentially pantheist and he classifies evil, amongst
many other things, into 'not-being'. This is done on the grounds that
evil is the opposite of good, a quality of God, but God can have no
opposite, since God is everything in the pantheist view of the world.
Similarly, the idea that God created the world out of "nothing" is to
be interpreted as meaning that the "nothing" here is synonymous with
God.
G. W. F. Hegel
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) is the philosopher who
brought the dialectical method to a new pinnacle of development.
According to Hegel in 'Science of Logic', the dialectical methods
consists of three steps. First, a thesis is given, which can be any
proposition in logic. Second, the antithesis of the thesis is formed
and, finally, a synthesis incorporating both thesis and antithesis.
Hegel believed that no proposition taken by itself can be completely
true. Only the whole can be true, and the dialectical synthesis was
the means by which the whole could be examined in relation to a
specific proposition. Truth consists of the whole process. Separating
out thesis, antithesis, or synthesis as a stand-alone statement
results in something that is in some way or other untrue. The concept
of "nothing" arises in Hegel right at the beginning of his 'Logic'.
The whole is called by Hegel the "Absolute" and is to be viewed as
something spiritual. Hegel then has:
* Thesis: the absolute is pure being
* Antithesis: the absolute is nothing
* Synthesis: the absolute is becoming
Existentialists
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The most prominent figure among the existentialists is Jean-Paul
Sartre, whose ideas in his book 'Being and Nothingness' ('L'être et le
néant') are heavily influenced by 'Being and Time' ('Sein und Zeit')
of Martin Heidegger, although Heidegger later stated that he was
misunderstood by Sartre. Sartre defines two kinds of "being" (être).
One kind is 'être-en-soi', the brute existence of things such as a
tree. The other kind is 'être-pour-soi' which is consciousness. Sartre
claims that this second kind of being is "nothing" since consciousness
cannot be an object of consciousness and can possess no essence.
Sartre, and even more so, Jaques Lacan, use this conception of nothing
as the foundation of their atheist philosophy. Equating nothingness
with being leads to creation from nothing and hence God is no longer
needed for there to be existence.
Eastern
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The understanding of "nothing" varies widely between cultures,
especially between Western and Eastern cultures and philosophical
traditions. For instance, 'Śūnyatā' (emptiness), unlike "nothingness",
is considered to be a state of mind in some forms of Buddhism (see
Nirvana, mu, and Bodhi). Achieving "nothing" as a state of mind in
this tradition allows one to be totally focused on a thought or
activity at a level of intensity that they would not be able to
achieve if they were consciously thinking. A classic example of this
is an archer attempting to erase the mind and clear the thoughts to
better focus on the shot. Some authors have pointed to similarities
between the Buddhist conception of nothingness and the ideas of Martin
Heidegger and existentialists like Sartre, although this connection
has not been explicitly made by the philosophers themselves.
In some Eastern philosophies, the concept of "nothingness" is
characterized by an egoless state of being in which one fully realizes
one's own small part in the cosmos.
The Kyoto School handles the concept of nothingness as well.
Taoism
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Laozi and Zhuangzi were both conscious that language is powerless in
the face of the ultimate. In Taoist philosophy, however real this
world is, its main characteristic is impermanence, whereas the Tao has
a permanence that cannot be described, predetermined, or named. In
this way the Tao is different from any thing that can be named. It is
nonexistence, in other words, nothing.
Taoists also have the related concept of 'wu wei'.
Science
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Despite the proven existence of vacuum, scientists through the 17th to
19th centuries thought there must be a medium pervading all space that
allowed the transmission of light or gravity. Thus, in this period, it
was not accepted that complete 'nothing' was possible. Theories
describing such a medium are collectively known as aether theories, so
named as an evocation of the aether, the classical element from Greek
philosophy. In particular, the medium that is supposed to allow the
transmission of light is called the luminiferous aether. This became
the centre of attention after James Clerk Maxwell proposed that light
was an electromagnetic wave in 1865.
Early aether theories include those of Robert Hooke (1665) and
Christiaan Huygens (1690). Newton also had an aether theory, but to
Newton, it was not the medium of transmission since he theorised light
was composed of "corpuscles" which moved by simple mechanical motion.
He needed the aether instead to explain refraction. Early theories
generally proposed a mechanical medium of some sort, allowing the
possibility of the same medium supporting both light and gravity.
Proof that light has a wave nature, rather than Newton's corpuscles,
was provided by Thomas Young in his 1803 interference experiment,
seemingly confirming the need for an aether. The most well known
attempt to detect the existence of the aether was the Michelson-Morley
experiment conducted by Albert A. Michelson in 1881, later repeated
with Edward W. Morley in 1887 with more precision. This failed to show
the desired effect, but reluctant to abandon the aether theory,
various attempts were made to modify it to account for the
Michelson-Morley result. Finally, Albert Einstein, building on the
work of Hendrik Lorentz, published his theory of special relativity in
1905 which dispenses entirely with the need for a luminiferous aether
to explain the transmission of light.
Although a physical medium was no longer required, the concept of
aether still did not entirely vanish. It remained necessary to assign
properties to the vacuum for various purposes. In some respects
'vacuum' and 'aether' are treated as synonyms by science. In modern
quantum field theory, a completely empty vacuum is not at zero-point
energy, the lowest possible energy state. First proposed by Paul Dirac
in 1927, the lowest energy state has constant random vacuum
fluctuations which bring into existence short-lived virtual particles.
This is somewhat reminiscent of early philosophical plenum ideas, and
means that 'vacuum' and 'nothing' are certainly not synonyms.
Mathematics
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Perhaps the best-known usage of the term "nothing" in mathematics is
the number 0, which is neither a positive number nor a negative
number. It's sometimes included in the set of natural numbers, denoted
by , but it's always included in the set of real numbers, denoted by .
"Nothing" can also apply to empty sets, indicated by the symbol ,
whose size or cardinality is 0.
See also
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* Absolute zero
* Big Bounce
* Creatio ex nihilo
* Dark matter
* Empty
* Eternal oblivion
* False vacuum
* Meontology
* Meaning of life
* Negation
* Nihilism
* No
* Nobody
* Vacuous truth
* Void
* Darkness
License
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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing
