Question:
The Nature of Nothing?
adella
2016-04-01 00:58:37 UTC
So, this is a topic that have been discussed and debated for as long as Humans could understand the concept of "Nothing". "Nothing" has been described as simple terms as the lack of something, or in as complex of a concept as the lack of anything; I.E Is Empty Space "Nothing", or by virtue of saving Space, "Something?"
So my question to you is, do you think the Human mind is even capable of really understanding absolute "Nothing"? the true lack of any imaginable "thing" (including Space, time, or laws), or does the very act of trying to imagine such a state make it "something".
29 answers:
rosalyn
2016-04-05 11:22:34 UTC
This question was answered thousands of years ago by the ancient Vedic Hindus, who possibly derived it from an earlier, unrecorded source. To simplify the reasoning, absolute nothingness is an impossibility. Existence is a thing in itself and it cannot not-exist. There can be existence that contains physical objects and there can be existence that is devoid of physical objects, but either way, existence itself remains.
nameless
2016-04-02 01:50:59 UTC
The Nature of Nothing?



~~~ There is no 'empty space', there is no no'thing'!

Every'thing' exists!

There is no no'thing' to not exist!



Save yourself a headache and confusion by dumping an obsolete and poor term and say "not anything I can see" (or whatever) instead!

Most questions immediately clear up!



There is no such thing as a complete vacuum!
Fuzzy
2016-04-03 11:49:27 UTC
Nothing doesn't exist outside the human mind, it is a human concept, in order for a point to even be observed there must be "something" there to be observed.



This is why the statement "something can't come from nothing" is flawed, as true total nothingness is a state that cannot exist.
Special EPhex
2016-04-02 21:14:02 UTC
'Nothing' as 'something' is a contradiction and a fallacy. I cannot believe people seriously introduce the idea in an logical and intellectual debate. 'Negation' is not inherent to the universe, and could only exists as abstract category of dualistic thought, transposed by the mind's imagination. You can 'possess wealth', but you cannot 'have poverty'. You can play any "intellectual game", or change the wording to explain something, but a thing, 'is' what it is, and you cannot change or expose reality by going outside of logic.
Mr. Interesting
2016-04-01 19:51:12 UTC
The Nature of Nothing? None. There is no "Nothing" in nature. It is a concept only, like gods and santa claus.
2016-04-01 02:35:20 UTC
Using your "simple terms" it's first necessary to define exactly what "something" is before determining it's absence. The argument has moved on and we are learning more of the probable nature of the universe, from the very large to the very small. Except in an exceptionally simplistic and limited way "nothing" doesn't exist, and nothing will convince me otherwise!
Doctor P
2016-04-01 01:33:51 UTC
Some would consider the study of "nothing" to be foolish, a typical response of this type is voiced by Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) in conversation with his landlord, one Dr. Gozzi, who also happens to be a priest,



“ As everything, for him, was an article of faith, nothing, to his mind, was difficult to understand: the Great Flood had covered the entire world; before, men had the misfortune of living a thousand years; God conversed with them; Noah had taken one hundred years to build the ark; while the earth, suspended in air, stood firmly at the center of the universe that God had created out of nothingness. When I said to him, and proved to him, that the existence of nothingness was absurd, he cut me short, calling me silly.[3] ”

However, "nothingness" has been treated as a serious subject worthy of research 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 unambiguously make clear what is being discussed.



Parmenides

One of the earliest western philosophers to consider nothing as a concept was Parmenides (5th century BC) who was 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. Since we can speak of a thing in the past, it must still exist (in some sense) now and from this concludes 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.[4]



Parmenides was taken seriously by other philosophers, influencing, for instance, Socrates and Plato.[5] Aristotle gives Parmenides serious consideration but concludes; "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."[6]



more........



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nature-all-or-nothing_b_9479962.html?section=india
Kaede
2016-04-02 04:03:55 UTC
Everything is a thing. The only things you can even talk about are "things". "Nothing" does not mean "the lack of something" (as if that even makes sense). "Nothing" is the denial of anything. If I say I got nothing for my birthday, I am denying that I got anything for my birthday. I got "no thing" or "zero things". If there was such a thing as nothing, then I did get something for my birthday after all, and that something was "nothing".



If I say "nothing can cure HIV" or "nothing is greater than infinity", I am not talking about a thing called "nothing", and I'm certainly not talking about "empty space".



Why is it that even children have a grasp of "nothing" and yet most of the people in the philosophy category can't get their head around it?



Once you take away all things, what you have left is no things, i.e. nothing. To treat "no things" as a thing that can be described and discussed is absurd.



I have heard someone before try to describe "nothing, not even nothing". He thought that there was a thing called "nothing" that is left over once you take away all things, and that after taking away that "nothing" you are left with "nothing, not even nothing".
?
2016-04-02 07:56:23 UTC
I believe everything that exists is nothing. So the term gets slippery in my hands. One of the symptoms of the nothingness of everything is the "nausea effect" described by Sartre. To me, the nauseating effect of apprehending the infinite quality of things is seeing the nothing they are made out of. Actually experiencing nothingness. So I must have a different nothing than you do.
d_r_siva
2016-04-01 01:32:12 UTC
If you take away everything that is physical (matter/energy), you are left with nothing (no thing). Nothing is completely empty space, absolute cold, silence and darkness. Nothing is infinite, eternal and indestructible. It does not move; it does not have to. It is already everywhere. The universe is more than 99.999% empty space, including our own bodies.



http://www.truthcontest.com/entries/the-present-universal-truth/nature-of-nothing.html



https://www.newscientist.com/round-up/nothingness/
?
2016-04-01 16:16:01 UTC
Just as we are INCAPABLE of experiencing unconsciousness, so we are incapable of experiencing

"nothing". A chase after this concept is a chase after a phantom- and, IMO, it is a waste of time. But I guess the mind game can be fun in a way.
small
2016-04-01 06:09:46 UTC
Nothingness can be well understood, discussed and debated by human mind as a concept, but obviously it can not be 'visualized' or 'realized' because it does not exist in our reality.
Prasad
2016-04-01 01:38:04 UTC
If you take away everything that is physical (matter/energy), you’re left with nothing (no thing). Nothing is completely empty space, absolute cold, silence and darkness. “Nothing” is infinite, eternal and indestructible. It does not move. It does not have to; it is already everywhere. The universe is more than 99.9999999% empty space. Even our own bodies are mostly empty space. All physical things are because atoms are mostly empty space. There is a small amount of energy like light and radio waves passing through the entire universe, but it is essentially an infinite void.





True perspective: The way our solar system is shown in books does not give you a true perspective of it. It shows the sun and the other planets orbiting it in rings that are not to scale. They could not get it in a book if it was to scale. The actual scale is more like this: if the sun was the size of a basketball, the earth would be smaller than a grain of sand, and it would be thousands of feet away from it. Pluto, the outer most planet in our system, would be a grain of sand miles away. The next star outside our solar system would be thousands of miles away. It takes light that travels about one-hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second about eight minutes to go from the sun to our planet. It will go around the earth seven times in one second, but it takes four years to get to the next star outside our solar system, 2.5 million years to get to the next galaxy. This gives you a more true idea of how much empty space there is in our universe. Most of everything is nothing.



You cannot turn off “nothing” or do anything to it. It always stays the same, is always everywhere all the time, infinite, omnipresent, and eternal. Nothing is really something. Einstein's general relativity equations show that space bends, and it proves that nothing is really something with substance. Space is shaped, and it is the shape of space that creates the gravity that controls and creates the whole universe. It holds the planets in orbit, makes the sun and other stars burn, bends light, keeps us from falling off the earth, and it is empty space, nothing.





Nothing causes everything to happen.





Value of general relativity: I always wondered what the practical benefit of general relativity was, and now I know. It proves that nothing controls and creates the whole universe, directly and indirectly.





Our consciousness is also like nothing. It is the so-called empty space between everything. The majority of everything is nothing, and it connects everything, everywhere. Our essential, immortal self or soul is like the blank sheet that physical life is written on, the darkness that gives light a place to shine, the silence that gives sound a place to be heard, an infinite stadium that the game of life is played in. Nothing is the complete opposite of what people think. It is impossible to get your mind around



You cannot experience nothing: You do not look inside yourself to find yourself as some eastern religions have been saying; there is nothing there. You cannot see or experience nothing; it is impossible. You can be like nothing, but not experience it. There is nothing to experience.





Your soul/spirit or consciousness, is in a dark, silent void that is open to life.



Immortality: “It’s impossible to be conscious of being unconscious.”



http://www.livescience.com/28132-what-is-nothing-physicists-debate.html



http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nothingness/



The Physics of Nothing; The Philosophy of Everything



http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/08/16/the-physics-of-nothing-the-phi/
?
2016-04-01 01:33:33 UTC
Philosophically speaking. It is okay, provided you don't take it lightly. You should be serious about it. I hope you are not confused with my answer.



This is a little story about four people named “Everybody”, “Somebody”, “Anybody”, and “Nobody”.



There was an important job to be done and “Everybody” was sure that “somebody” would do it. Anybody could have done it, but nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job.

“Everybody” thought that “Anybody” could do it, but “Nobody” realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that “Everybody” blamed “Somebody” when “Nobody” did what “Anybody” could have done.
darkcloud
2016-04-02 17:10:53 UTC
Just because your finger touches water doesn't make it become a part of you but if you swallow it , it does , so as for nothing the moment it is the subject it becomes something . if you ignore it ,it reappears .
Abul Kalam
2016-04-01 12:18:22 UTC
Nature is beauty Ever i see.
2016-04-01 05:31:49 UTC
We don't understand it all there are limitations one I think is how often space is used, wether it be for population or environment. Space is actually the machine that controls humans we don't make space space makes us. Not outer space your surroundings.
?
2016-04-01 01:00:27 UTC
An old answer of mine would be, "all darkness." But then I realized, darkness or blackness is something. So in reality, absolutely nothing is not to be fathomed.
?
2016-04-01 06:06:30 UTC
Did you have a question in that turgid lump of prose?

There is no thing to understand, no "nature" - that which is not may be ignored.
Mortal Dimunitive
2016-04-01 02:26:25 UTC
For where the beginning is, there will the end be. Blessed is he who shall stand at the beginning for he shall not taste of death.
JORGE N
2016-04-01 11:56:34 UTC
It is a term I use when my instincts have been stimulated and I realize that no harm has been done to me or anyone else.
anali
2016-04-01 15:14:55 UTC
nature is beauti ever
hitash
2016-04-01 23:29:19 UTC
Philosophically speaking. It is okay, provided you don't take it lightly.
2016-04-01 17:51:16 UTC
there is a Japanese culture based entirely around the concept of "mu" (nothingness).

it is said that to become nothing is to become one with everything...

that said:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aUwrZqhrtY8
?
2016-04-05 00:48:33 UTC
if you be a theist there is no any place be call "nothing",otherwise there are so many places be name nothing.
gerald
2016-04-01 01:10:08 UTC
to be or not to be that is the question it is all in the mind without the human mind everything just is
2016-04-01 22:04:35 UTC
nothing is the pocket in which everything resides.
peevee
2016-04-01 17:03:19 UTC
It is the absence of everything.
guille
2016-04-02 17:22:13 UTC
if you take away everytingh that is physical


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