does everything include nothing?

dont really know if this is a debate or not, but i have always liked this q. people tend to start thinking on a much grander scale than normal.

anyhows, we all agree that nothing is....well nothing. and if it isnt anything it doesnt exist does it? still we have a word for it. well, the opposite of nothing is everything, which is.....everything(ok this is getting annoying :)) but does that everything include the meaning we put behind the word nothing, and if so how can that be!

another thing, zero, 0 or the number nothing, its all the same. its nothing, still an awful lots of huge numbers would look awfully silly without it.

this i see as a proof nothing is included in everything. so from my point of view on with the question, where in this everything we know we are living in is that nothing?

This is a perfect example of why you can't use language to discuss mathematical terms.

By the way, the opposite of nothing is something, not everything.

I have in front of me a galley copy of a book due out in October, called THe Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero, by Robert Kaplan.

I've only read the first chapter so far, so I can't even really tell you much, except that early numbering systems, before somebody (not nobody) discovered "zero." But if you can wait 'til October, you might get your question answered. :)

------------------
"A woman came up to me and said 'I'd like to poison your mind with wrong ideas that appeal to you though I am not unkind'" -- They Might Be Giants, "Whistling in the Dark"

I have nothing to say on this subject...

Now that's something!

------------------
Brian O'Neill
CMC International Records
www.cmcinternational.com (http://www.cmcinternational.com)

ICQ 35294890
AIM Scrabble1
Yahoo Messenger Brian_ONeill

Nothing has no opposite. 'Nothing' does not exist anyway, it's just an abstract idea.

Yes everything includes nothing.

I'll demonstrate...

First, get everything and put it somewhere, say your garage. No start removing things one by one, any item that isn't a nothing. When you're done, what's left? Nothing! That nothing must have been put there when you put everything in.

QED :p

------------------
Carpe hoc!
(The Artist formerly known as pathunt)

mrknowitall: so you are saying that in your garage you have nothing?, there is nothing in your garage even after you put everything in it?

i wasnt refering to any grammar thingy when i said nothing was the opposide of everything, i was refering to a saying in my country which can be translated so: everything or nothing? commonly used in betting......all or nothing i belive you say it, but using the word everything leads me to my question.

Guy,

I think "all or nothing" refers to the outcome... If you win, you take it ALL home with you, if you lose, you take NOTHING.

As to the original question, its best expressed in set theory. "Nothing" is the empty set. As Guy pointed out, the opposite of "nothing" is "something", not "everything". "Something" is the set of at least one thing. "Everything" is the set of all things - AKA the universal set. "Zero", by the way, is not "nothing", it's "something", and that's important... especially in very large and very small numbers, as you've pointed out.

By definition, the universal set (everything) includes the empty set (nothing), as stated by MrKnowItAll. Incidentally, the universal set (everything) also includes the set of at least one thing (something). If you take the universal set and remove "everything", you're left with the empty set. Therefore, this is why we can use sentences like the following with mathematical impunity. "He used to be 'something', but then he lost 'everything', so now he's 'nothing'."

Make sense? [wink]

MrKnowItAll writes:


First, get everything and put it somewhere, say your garage.


I take it you've seen my garage then?

"All or nothing" in betting means that, if you choose to make a bet, you must stake all the money you've won up to that point.

Part 1:"nothing" and "everything" are ideas.

Ideas can't be touched, measured, tasted, etc. They are outside tangeable reality. If the intangeable exists, then nothing does too. It must therefore be included in the idea of everything.

If the intangeable does not exist, then neither does everything. It must therefore be included in the idea of nothing. But wait... nothing doesn't exist either! It can't include anything.

Let's try this again: If the intangeable does not exist, then neither does nothing. It can't be included in everything, which is fine because everything doesn't exist anyway.

Part 2) Where is this everything? In your head, in the realm of majick, in God(s), it is all up to you to decide.

yes...its always good to see that people can still think, you give me hope guys that the human race isnt done for yet.

that zero thing was really based as a joke, while still putting a vague idea of what i was talking about into your heads.

--------------------------------------------
it was a book i read (soul music, terry prachett)
in reading the book you came to the conclusion that the world was build by music. at least sounds and stuff. well there was this boy who got his life prolonged by music, he had found this magical guitar and stuff. i guess the world was looking for a hobby or somthing like that. well anyhows that intriqued death, of course it did, the boy didnt die when he was supposed to. but well anyhows, when the world finally wanted to stop this, ending the boys life, death intervened (elvis like!)
to save the boys life. the world said that there was nothing death could do. but death took up the guitar and played zero. simple and effective.

I was struck with this today. Yes, everything DOES contain nothing. Think of the universe. It contains stars, planets, moons, asteroids, quasars and the space between them, which is nothing!
Also, you can take away from something and everything, but you can't take away from nothing. You can have 3 bicycles in MrKnowItAll's garage, but you can't have (-3) bicycles.
You can't use matheatical quantities to describe abstractions like nothingness and somethingness.

thats why mathematically speaking,
nothing = 0;

So all you're tellin' me is that nothing is for real.

Nanobyte, not only that, but it's nothing to get hung about.

PLD
"Strawberry Fields Forever!"

Mathematically, zero is not "nothing"; the empty set {} is "nothing". Zero is the number of elements contained in the empty set.

If you have an empty box, that box contains nothing. The contents of that box are isomorphic to the contents of the empty set.

How many apples are in the empty box? Zero.
How many elements are in the empty set? Zero.

Zero is the number you get when you count the number of things contained in nothing.

I wonder if this will still make sense after my afternoon caffeine fix.

Also note that {0}, the set containing zero, is different from {} the empty set.

{0} contains one element.
Further proof that zero is something!

Well, I'm { \__/ } for nothing.
\/

Make that:

Well, I'm { \__/ } for nothing.
. . . . . . .\/

Third time's a charm:

Well, I'm { \__/ } for nothing.
. . . . . . . . .\/

Perfection:

Well, I'm { \__/ } for nothing.
.. . . . . . . .\/

Does everything include nothing?
Yes and No.

auraseer: what you said:
"Zero is the number you get when you count the number of things contained in nothing."
= what i said: "thats why mathematically speaking, nothing = 0;"

and {0} contains one element, but so does {8} etc. its what that element is that counts.

another thing... how far is infinite?
considering the only thing we know is infinite is a circle{0}

bj0rn

bj0rn,

You wrote:

auraseer: what you said:
"Zero is the number you get when you count the number of things contained in nothing." = what i said: "thats why mathematically speaking, nothing = 0;" and {0} contains one element, but so does {8} etc. its what that element is that counts.


No. AuraSeer is right. You are confusing sets with values. You think that because you have zero apples in a basket and the basket obviously contains nothing, that zero and nothing are synomymous. This is incorrect.

To demonstrate why, I'm going to make some substitutions to the apple-basket model. Instead of a basket, let's assume we have a sphere and instead of apples, let's assume we're talking about electrons. This allows us to talk about the charge on the sphere as being in terms of both negative and positive. It's very hard to visualize negative apples in a basket... OK, so let's say that the natural (empty) state of our sphere is when there is no charge. If we add an electron, the charge on the sphere goes slightly positive. If instead, we removed an electron, the charge on the sphere goes negative. Are you with me so far? At this point, I've not changed the apple-basket model too radically, I've just allowed for negative appples, since in the real world, we do have negative things. By your definition, I think you would still call the state of the sphere with zero charge the same as nothing (with respect to charge) on the sphere. However, we arbitrarily assigned zero charge on the sphere to be it's natural state - in real life, things don't always baseline to zero. If I had said that the "empty" state of the sphere is when the charge is -10, then you have to add electrons to the sphere to reach a charge of zero. Or said another way, in this case -10 is "nothing" and zero is more than "nothing".

Nothingness is a state, zero is a value. Hopefully that's clear and easy to follow.



considering the only thing we know is infinite is a circle{0}


I'm not sure what you're trying to demonstrate about a circle??? However there are many things in the real world that have infinite properties about them. The square root of 2, the number pi, 1/3, etc. all have an infinite number of digits on the right side of the decimal point, for instance.

Of course, the charge on an electron is negative, but aside from that, your example holds. =)


Powers

Joey, a circle is often symbolic of eternity because it does not end, an has an infinite number of sides. (Inside and outside, hahaha, I know.) You can't draw an infinitely long line, so you draw a circle or a sidways 8. Wherever you start, when you get to the end, it's the beginning, so you have to start over. Infinity.

I just thought of something. Circle might be used as a zero because when you draw it, you don't put anything inside it. It is a literal picture of the empty set, of nothing. I never did understand how an eternity symbol got to mean zero. Wow!!

------------------
possibly the world's only naive cynic

Space is filled with nothingness
and birds fly upon thin air.
Don't concern yourself with impossibilities,
don't concern yourself unless no one's there.
----------

What has been said about nothingness so far is good. But. Nothingness is everywhere. It is between the buildings on the way to work. It is hiding on the floor below the library, just out of sight. It is between your cells, between the atoms and the smaller things.
Space is filled with nothingness, and something more. And where nothing exists, something can also exist. It paves the way, one may think.
Now that that's clear as mud...(cause if dirt were clear, mud would be too.)
----------

Isn't the sphere the more perfect model of infinity?

Even if it isn't, a hypothetical situation should stir the puddle well.
----------

If I were twenty feet from a phone booth, and I closed half the distance, ten feet, then another half, five, then two and a half, and so on, always moving in halves, I'd never reach the phone booth.
Simple deduction.
Yet, from past experience we find the obvious fault in this situation. In real life, we will make it to the phone booth. Even though the logic says other wise.
So, where does the system fail?
Lets go over this again. If you have a friend hold their hand eight inches from your face, and he moves it half way, and half way, will you feel it when they contact you? Then you touched. Despite the logic.
Here's the tricky part. Can you remember the pressure of their touch? Then you're still touching! In an abstract sense, anyway.
Consider this:
If you divide that eight inches in half, and divide the result in half, and so on, the pattern will continue itself infinitely. Thus, at some point, you were one divided by infinity inches away from his hand. You two were infinitely far away, at your closest point. So how far away were you when he pulled his hand back? Was it farther than infinitely? Then your still touching. At least, you did touch, and your as far away now as you were then. In essence, the same distance, anyway.

There is a bit of a skip there, as I say you were 1/infinity inches away, and then claim that is the same distance as an infinite number of inches would be. But this seems a comfortable case of extremes.

All this assuming that infinity is real, and that we experience it daily.

Clear as mud, neh?
-----------

"And this, too, was truth."
--Frank Herbert, Dune 65

Allen,

I agree about the sphere being a better model of infinity. A circle has an infinite number of points and diameters, take any one of it's infinite number of diameters, and rotate the circle around it, you get a sphere. Now, you also have an infinite number of planes intersecting the center, in each of which you have a circle.

Guess, what.. take any one plane and start imagining planes parallel to it, like pages in a book. You will have an infinite number of different sized circles(ok, two of each size, but an infinite number of sizes), each of which can be made into a sphere which fits into your origional sphere perfectly.
-----
The phonebooth example, IMHO, breaks down because the theory behind it describes the person and the booth as points. They aren't points, they actually take up space. Two points don't meet until they are exactly in the same place at the same time. Two objects meet when they are touching. Even if you draw lines at half of half of half, etc. instead of having a person walk the marks take up space. (For example, a typical ball point pen makes a mark 1/(32) of an inch wide.) Bottom line, in real life I ignore differences to minute to measure, and I assume everyone else does. Any experiment is subject to the limitations of measurement as well as the theory it's designed to test.

Your tricky part is indeed confusing, as I don't quite understand why one infinity has to be the same as another. I consider infinitely large and infinitely small to be different ideas, and those to be diferent from things like pi and sqrt(2) that are always between two finite numbers, but can't be discribed by any of them exactly. Is this some error I picked up? Is there a mathematician who can explain it to me?

ok, lets see now... why did i say a circle was the only thing we knew to be infinite, because we can see it...we know for a fact that lots of other mathmatical things are infinite. also that about the elements ({0} and those things) i was mearly trying to say that you couldnt use this method in this puzzle here.

sphere, i think, is not the best way to describe infinity. you can be inside the sphere, or outside it...although a sphere is just a 3d circle(0). considering the 3d world, what is infinite in that?? the universe? if the universe isnt infinite, nothing can be.

originally, i meant to ask if we can see infinity, i just wanted you to talk about it a bit first. i think i can see infinitely far away. meaning, things far far away are there even if i dont see them, they are just not visible enough to be seen(yes, silly concept). but if those things were to make themselves visible enough, i would see them. thus proving i could see that far...and further. its all a question of light.

This debate, believe it or not, was originally held by the Pre-Socratic Greeks way back when, and led Democritus to his belief that the world is made up of atoms. The debate went something like this:

Parmenides decided nothing couldn't exist. His reasoning went as follows: if you try to think of nothing you will fail, because every time you think, no matter what, you are thinking of something. Since the Greeks took it as a given that if the mind can't know it, it can't exist, he had them. Nothing simply couldn't exist. Therefore, the world was an illusion. Why? Well, obviously, without a nothing, movement becomes impossible. You can't get there from here. You can't see to there because there's no nothing to see through. Etc, etc.
Zeno's paradoxes, the ones about being unable to get to the door without reaching half the distance, and being unable to get to half the distance without getting to half that distance, were meant to prove Parmenides correct. The mathematics was impeccable, and had them stumped.
Democritus figured that if you could fill the world with discrete Parminedean solids, you could fill the world with an uncountably large but still finite number of points, a point beyond which you could divide no further. This was his answer to Zeno, and he called his concept atoms - Greek for indivisible ones. Each was a Parminedean solid on a very small scale, and if you took all of them together, you got the world.
Which means not only that everything includes nothing, but that everything must necessarily include nothing, or you wind up thinking that the world is an illusion, that life is an illusion.

pantom: quite good...we cant argue with that. but permenides said nothing exists, didnt he? zeno on the other hand is saying atoms are nothing(being invisible, they dont exist)but now we have seen them, every day we see them, we know what they are, and therefore we can touch them. we also know that atoms are made of something (cant remember the names, but i know they are there), so what zeno is saying is no longer true. but basically what hes saying is true. what we dont know exist is nothing, until we find it, so what exist... but we havent found, is nothing! (well, as far as we know).
but is this right thinking? denying existance because we dont know what it is or if it exists? its of course difficult to think like that, we can never know if we have discovered everything possible...or can we?

well, keep up the good work :) it makes the world a better place to live in.

bj0rn,

Atom meant indivisible NOT invisible... though, we know today that atoms are indeed divisible...

I Loved that Monie "THe indivisible Man"

Of course, we now know that man is indeed divisible.

Let us remove everything from the giant garage that is our universe, shall we? OK, our universe, which formerly contained clusters of galaxies and whatnot, now contains nothing.

But wait, you might be thinking, this isn't really so; this Ahunter3 dude has led us to consider it as a hypothetical case, so we're visualizing the universe as empty, but the empty universe doesn't exist except in our imaginations (the real one still contains things like computer monitors and interstellar dust clouds, etc). OK, fair enough...

But if we really (somehow) did it, somehow, really emptied the universe so that it contained nothing, in what meaningful ways would that universe then be different from the hypothetical one that you entertained in your mind at my suggestion? Is there any difference between a hypothetical universe containing nothing and a real universe containing nothing?



------------------
Designated Optional Signature at Bottom of Post

Well, nothing from nothing leaves nothing.

But ya gotta have something, if you want to believe in me.

No, bjorn, Parmenides never did say that nothing (or more properly nothingness, I guess) existed. The lynchpin of his argument was that nothing couldn't exist. Behind that, he was basing it all on the Greek idea that the mind could know everything, so if there was something - like nothing - it couldn't really know, that something couldn't exist. This was an extreme form of rationalism, as opposed to the empiricism of modern science (do an experiment, see what the results are, modify your theory, design another experiment to test that, etc.).
Atoms, of course, are made up of protons, electrons, and neutrons, to begin with. Below all of these particles, allegedly, are quarks which are supposed to have "charm", if I remember my physics correctly... A far cry, anyway, from Democritus' solid, indivisible particles.
Ahunter3: good question. Also, inherently unknowable, eh? After all, if you somehow managed to get yourself into a real universe that contained nothing, it would no longer contain nothing, would it?

sorry about that, my bad.

so zeno just "made up" atoms(well he was right, in a way).

what is nothing i think we have to ask ourselves. is it the absence of something?
it isnt a mathematical concept, we have figured that much out, although it has a mathematical likeness in 0.
have you read terry pratchett? i think it was the book guards, guards... well it was one of those books anyway. detritius(something like that)wrote down every number in the world, but was interupted before he could write that thing after =. well considering it was every number in the world it must be like this: "every * number / in + the - world" = 0. if you dont get zero you havent written down every number in the world. so if 0 is a mathimatical likeness of nothing, everything in the world put together must be = nothing. proven by the garage theory. you put everything in the garage, how many things? everything, well lets do this mathematically, everything - everything = 0. if you have 4 apples, then you eat em all(with the core, for you sarcastic beings), what do you have left? you dont say zero, you say nothing.

something for ponder
bj0rn

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 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.

bjOrn, Uh, no...Detritus was writing down every number, rather he was defining himself in mathmatical terms...Read it again and you will notice that it is implied that the equal sign was pointing where he was sitting. The other way you can interpret it is that he was calculating a theory of everything, but not writing down everything, there is a difference. And the book in question is _Men at Arms_.

------------------
>>Being Chaotic Evil means never having to say your sorry....unless the other guy is bigger than you.<<

---The dragon observes

doesnt really matter, calculating the theory of everything or writing down everything.
so i didnt recall exacly what he was doing, but it still doesnt change the fact that if you write down everything you get = 0.

the theory of everything = detritius, is correct, but only for him. if you were to do that, it would be everything = you. meaning that if you werent where you are everthing = nothing, but since there are alot of other things to be equal to everything (natually it can be reversed, you = everything, simple mathematical fact). that further proves that everything is more of an opposite to nothing that something is. cause something - something != nothing. (for those who havent seen this : !=, it stands for "not equal to")

and further down along this line, why wasnt there year 0? mathematically speaking, year nothing(dont take this mathematical statement seriously).

bj0rn

[other-wise]

Hi y'all-
I know I'm cutting in on this debate kinda late, but it strikes me that the debatees appear to be using (outside of the mathematical references) at least two different meanings for "nothing".

1) It's commonplace usage as a linguistic symbol, where nothing = the lack of SOMEthing and functions as a generic "placeholder", pointing to something else, i.e. "There were four apples in the basket and I took them out. Now there's nothing in the basket". That is, nothing = the lack of four apples (or garage contents or whatever).

2)Nothing as an abstract concept, i.e. nothing = the lack of EVERYthing.

It seems to me (feel free to pounce) that "nothing-as-abstract-concept" doesn't exist, because if anything exists, nothing can't.

[bj0rn]

if anything exists, nothing can't.

then you can do this too, if anything exists
everything cant.

[bj0rn]

darn theese
if anything exists, nothing can't.
qoutes

[other-wise]

RE: "then you can do this too, if anything exists everything can't"...BjOrn, how do you figure?

Everything as abstract concept: "Everything" is the collective totality of all things. "Anything" is non-specific. It refers to something that just IS. In other words, "everything" consists of all of those "anythings", so if "anything" (even just one "anything") exists, so must everything.

"...nothing, nothing, everything is nothing..."

-- The Fugs

[bj0rn]

then nothing must also exist, we have a word for it, we have a symbol for it, and therefore it must be included in everything.

back to square 1.

is nothing included in everything?

can we think of nothing as 0?
or is nothing the opposide of everything that is something?
like a negative side?
you can have 1, does that mean that nothing of 1 is -1?
does that lead to the conclusion that 0 is the absolute everything, and therefore nothing as well?

if you take all the numbers in the world, add, subract, multiply...whatever...them together on one side of a = mark. you get a 0 on the other side of the = mark.

[other-wise]

Exactly my point. Certainly, the symbol (in this case, a word) exists, but symbols themselves and what the symbols represent are two different things. The word "chair" exists but I can't sit in it. And just because a symbol exists doesn't necessarily mean what the symbol represents exists.

In this discussion, the word "nothing" has been used (sometimes) to represent a concept. Do abstract concepts exist? Dawnbird raised that question and I didn't have the guts or the free time to pick up THAT particular gauntlet. The main point I was trying to get across is that I think people tend to use
1) "nothing" (as a handy lingusitic signpost)
2) "nothing" (to represent a concept)
3) "nothing" (when, more precisely, they mean zero)
as if they were interchangeable, which gums up the whole inquiry.

By the way, I like your "or is nothing the opposite of everything that is something? like a negative side?"… it makes my brain slide around when I think about it.

[bj0rn]

:) yeah, thanks...
come to think of it, it made perfect sense when i wrote it...now i have a headache.
or perhaps it isnt a headache, maybe the it is just something replacing the nothing in my brain, and its just hasnt found a comfortable seat yet?

whatever...i am going to suggest that a shadow is nothing!
shadow is the negative side of yourself, therefore the nothing of you.

bj0rn

[EnigmaOne]

I'm bummed! I just got back from the kitchen....there's nothing in the refrigerator! Everything is gone, and just when I would have eaten anything.


------------------

--Kalél
Common ¢ for all ages...
"Well, there was that thing with the Cheese-Wiz....but I'm feeling much better now!" -- John Astin, Night Court

[Polycarp]

So, the conclusion this group has come to is, as the heavy metal song goes, "Nothing really matters"?? :o

[skupla]

OK if you take everything and put it in an alternate universe that contains nothing\garage

then whats left in this universe? nothing.

Now put everything back and whats in the other universe? nothing.

That leads me to the conclusion that nothing does exist just not in the same place as everything.

------------------
Hafþór

[yyzblues]

Yeah butt...

Nuttin' from nuttin' leaves nuttin' - ya gotta have sumpin' - if ya wanna be with me.

This is not difficult. Conceptual everything is the universal set, and the mental impression of nothing is the empty set. Therefore, conceptual nothing is a subset of theoretical everything (which is unfathomable), and the idea of everything could not be a subset of anything, unless conceptual everything just happens to truly be the abstract image of nothing. Dig?

[Kabbak]

this discussion is full of thingymagics

[bj0rn]

well hello my good buddies, if it werent for you, i would be alone in this dog-forsaken universe (pardon my french oh...great labrador in heaven).
and because this isnt a religious thread im going to say something else.

what might be an interesting thing, is yes...we are talking in thingymagic. which is what everything and nothing is...but something isnt. so the thingymagic of to day would be something like: anything is every something possible, and nothing isnt!

bj0rn

[Wordsmith]

Premises:

1. We are discussing nothing in this forum.
2. We are discussing something in this forum.

Conclusion:

3. Nothing is something.

------------------
Wordsmith: One of the elite few who knows that George Herbert Walker Bush was a Huge Berserk Rebel Warthog.

[Polycarp]

OK, if nothing is the opposite of everything and I don't have everything, does it necessarily follow that I have nothing?

AHunter...is it even possible to conceive of a totally empty universe? Don't you have to be present in it mentally to visualize it? As an abstract idea, sure, but I see myself at a place looking out at nothing when I try to conceive it, and therefore don't have a totally empty universe...I'm in it.

My conclusion is that matter and energy are necessary to have space and time. Without reference to the former, the latter have no meaning.

{{{tossing Cosmos over to AHunter3}}} ball's in your court! :)

[bj0rn]

OK, if nothing is the opposite of everything and I don't have everything, does it necessarily follow that I have nothing?

no, you could have something :)

My conclusion is that matter and energy are necessary to have space and time. Without reference to the former, the latter have no meaning.

so there isnt anything we can call nothing??
...strange, what was that word i was using??
"nothing", like in not a thing? or no thing?

or is it just a word for "no matter and energy around here!"?

bj0rn

[AHunter3]

Saving yet another Deeply Philosophical Thread from the pruning-room floor.

::bump::

[MrO]

Originally posted by other-wise


1) It's commonplace usage as a linguistic symbol, where nothing = the lack of SOMEthing and functions as a generic "placeholder", pointing to something else, i.e. "There were four apples in the basket and I took them out. Now there's nothing in the basket". That is, nothing = the lack of four apples (or garage contents or whatever).

2)Nothing as an abstract concept, i.e. nothing = the lack of EVERYthing.

It seems to me (feel free to pounce) that "nothing-as-abstract-concept" doesn't exist, because if anything exists, nothing can't.

I agree. The second kind of nothing you mentioned, the "nothing-as-abstract-concept" kind, doesn't exist, at least not really. Rather, it exists as a concept. That's the only existence that abstract concepts have. Abstractions like "the lack of everything" exist abstractly, not literally.

Of course it's fun and interesting and sometimes even useful to examine the line that divides the real from the conceptual, and like everything else, it's a matter of interpretation. But I suspect that what divides the real from the abstract is not as distinct as we would like it to be. I think that some things just fall in between somewhere, or rather outside the entire dichotomy, which may, for all we know, be a false one.

Then again, if we use it carefully, language can keep the distinction pretty clear. Nothingness exists, but nothing doesn't.

One of my favorite professors, while walking with some students across the campus, stopped, grabbed a handful of leaves from overhead, looked at us over her reading glasses, and shook the leaves in our faces. Stuff, she said, is real, and words are a damn poor substitute.

Grad school was kinda fun, but I live in a much more real world now.

[Lost In Reality]

I have to admit I stopped reading the whole post, but working with Set Theory we can prove that both nothing is included in everything and nothing is something. In order to do this first we have to create some premises.

The null set is equal to nothing. An element is an entity within a set and is therefore something.

In order to prove that the null set, which is nothing, is included in everything one must utilize the a contradiction proof. If I create set B, and B has the elements within it {x,y,z}. The null set includes {}. As one can simply see the null set includes nothing that is not a part of B. Therefore we are able to place the null set within B. Therefore the null set is part of set B. This can be repeated for the universal set as well.

Since we defined B now as {x,y,z,null set} we now can define the null set as an element of set B. Going back to the original premise that an element is an entity then the null set is an entity and is therefore something.

For more information read the "Naive Set Theory" by Springer-Verlag.

------------
Not Having a Quote Since 1981

[DrMatrix]

Originally posted by Lost In Reality
The null set is equal to nothing. An element is an entity within a set and is therefore something.Not so. The null set contains nothing. A set is not the same as its contents.In order to prove that the null set, which is nothing, is included in everything one must utilize the a contradiction proof. If I create set B, and B has the elements within it {x,y,z}. The null set includes {}. As one can simply see the null set includes nothing that is not a part of B. Therefore we are able to place the null set within B. Therefore the null set is part of set B. This can be repeated for the universal set as well.

Since we defined B now as {x,y,z,null set} we now can define the null set as an element of set B. Going back to the original premise that an element is an entity then the null set is an entity and is therefore something.
The set {x,y,z} has three elements. The set {x,y,z,null set} has four elements. They are not equal. What you have demonstrated is that the null set is a subset of every set. It is not contained in every set.

[bj0rn]

imagine you have everything in your hand, then you throw it away. did you throw away nothing? or do you have nothing in your hand?

as by the function of the words everything and nothing, nothing can not be included in everything, thus making everything: everything but nothing!

bj0rn - one learns while lives.

[Jon Locke]

I'm not a mathematician so I can't argue with everyone's null sets and whatnot, but speaking from the standpoint of theoretical physics the universe, matter/energy and space/time and alternate dimensions is made up of super strings. (String Theory.) The whole universe is freestanding waves on these strings.

Everybody posting so far has talked about matter but no one has made the suggestion that space itself counts as a thing. To be outside of space itself is a condition which I really sincerely doubt the human mind can comprehend. Not just no matter, not just blackness, but nothing. That is what nothing is. It's hard to even imagine. You can unravel a hypercube but it's impossible to unravel nothing.

[Mangetout]

Nothing is a negative concept; it's the absence of something (or the absence of everything - same thing, because everything is the largest possible set of somethings).

it's nonsense to talk about the 'presence of nothing', think about it, if you could have the presence of nothing, you should be able to have 'two nothings' or 'an abundance of nothings'

So by [this] definition everything can't include nothing, otherwise the presence of everything would have to exclude the presence of everything.

[bj0rn]

the problem is that everything does include nothing...the word nothing, not its meaning. so by all definitions everybody is correct.

bj0rn - harmony comes through nothing