What?
What is “Nothing?” Are there words in the English language to describe “Nothing?” If you describe it then isn’t it “Something?”
You mean besides the word “nothing”?
Void post.
Null
Nothing is…“No thing”.
Sounds like we’ve got a bit of a semantic paradox here, perhaps this belongs in GD. Although a perfect vacuum does not exist, let us suppose that it does. It would be a complete and utter lack of anything, no molecules, no particle flux. Yet we can conceive of, describe and name this complete nothingness, so it must be something after all. So nothing is really something.
But is that really a paradox? I suppose “nothing” would be if the universe didn’t exist and we weren’t here to think about it.
In a more colloquial sense, nothing is the lack of something otherwise expected to be there. What’s in the box? Nothing. Well, my 9-year-old-smartass son will say, “Yes, there’s air!”
So, in that case…wait a second, what was the question again?
Probably not the opposite of something, but I’m not sure.
I remember reading somewhere that “Nothing” is unstable. That’s why the Big Bang happened. Perhaps there can’t be “Nothing”
Then again, perhaps “Nothing” is the center of a Black Hole.
Nothing is the absense of something.
The Earl of Rochester put it best:
Upon Nothing
Nothing, thou elder brother even to shade,
That hadst a being ere the world was made,
And (well fixed) art alone of ending not afraid.
Ere time and place were, time and place were not,
When primitive Nothing Something straight begot,
Then all proceeded from the great united–What?
Something, the general attribute of all,
Severed from thee, its sole original,
Into thy boundless self must undistinguished fall.
…
French truth, Dutch prowess, British policy,
Hibernian learning, Scotch civility,
Spaniard’s dispatch, Dane’s wit are mainly seen in thee.
The great man’s gratitude to his best friend,
King’s promises, whore’s vows, towards thee they bend,
Flow swiftly into thee, and in thee never end.
No, the absence of something could be the presence of something else. True nothingness is the absence of ***anything ***(or any thing). Of course then we have to define “thing.”
I thought that empty space != nothing. Where are the physicists when you need them?
Thanks for your help,
Rob
Nothing is a lack of something, but one that is a kind of something in its own right, existentially speaking. If you go to a café to meet Pierre, and Pierre is not there, you are in the presence of the absence of Pierre. It’s a matter of a conflict between our expectations of the world and the actual world. This makes Jean-Paul Sartre freak out.
The difference between existentialists and analytical philosophers on the point of nothing is that whereas the former are afraid of Nothing, the latter think that there is nothing to be afraid of. (With thanks to Simon Blackburn.)
American Heritage dictionary says “Something that has no existence.”
Nobody knows.
‘I see nobody on the road,’ said Alice.
‘I only wish I had such eyes,’ the King remarked in a fretful
tone. ‘To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance, too!
Why, it’s as much as I can do to see real people, by this
light!’
– Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
So it must be self generating
Zero- a number which means “nothing”.
FatBaldGuy gave it true.
No.
Thing.
Just like ‘something’ is Some Thing.
Nothing is not a thing.
Given that this issue is more a matter of semantics than actual facts, I think this is better served in GD than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator