Can science and philosophy explore nothingness?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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and this is…

you can explore anything if you drink enough coffee…

-Imp

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We may not be able to explore it directly, but Heidegger made some interesting points about the possible role nothingness plays in Being.

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I believe Hegel had a soft spot for “it” too but I’m still struggling with him…

and loosing…

Badly

Hegel one: Krossie …er… nothing?

kp

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LOL
But Krossie can you comprehend that everything in existence could (I think) have never existed, leaving the most freakishly inconceivable “nothing” in its place…not that it would have a place!

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Even a “great one” like myself can’t really conceive of nothing - I mean I can use it mathematically or logically but it’s actuality no not really…even with coffee’:lol:’

I notice there’s already a fantastic dogfight on this topic elsewhere!

ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi … p?t=156215

Kp

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I’m sure science can explore me, but why would you want to know about me?

I’m am not One you’d exactly want to explore.

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Very funny, Nothingness, now pay attention.

First we must establish to what extent we use the concept in mathematics. I personally believe that “zero” does not exist, since if I write or say it, it must represent at least one quantity as an image, it must “be there” in form or in concept, although it has no active function in mathematics-- it means “no” numbers.

Likewise, in using the term “nothingess,” I am again creating only an image devoid of any conceptual content. I am saying a word which means nothing more than “here is a word.”

The only significance of “nothingness,” as Sartre put it, is that it is a structure with which we relate to the world as we render objects “present-absent” in experience. The affirmative function of the concept “nothingness” has being only when, in the mind, a previously experienced object is “derealized” as being absent: I walk into a room, SIATD is not “there,” and this recognition, although it is “nothing”, becomes the object of my consciousness. I “notice” that SIATD is not present, and I again notice that I notice this, and my consciousness becomes pre-reflective.

Any other use of the term is absurd.

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If you explore nothing, you’ll end up with nothing.

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Unity is distinguishable from nothingness. What is the basis of distinguishing unity from nothingness?

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in all conjecture,unity and nothingness are both the same thing,since neither have a point of reference.

nothingness may in fact exist as a end,a mean, or truth

yet to explore it would always take away its intrinsic meaning, and there would be (nothing) more to explore.

I am one to believe in it as truth,since meaning is subjective,and yet to say that would imply a universality,effectively mirroring nothingness.

though we’d (never) be able to prove that.

No donnie, these men are nilihlist

double negatives

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In light of the absurd,be most absurd

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ive been trying to make this point for a while, there is no way to prove existence on any level, so we must accept what we believe to exist

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Is there no difference between unity and nothingness?

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Wittgenstein

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  1. Nothing (0) is distinguishable from unity (1).
  2. Nothing (0) is indistinguishable from unity (1).

Of 1 &2, which one is true?

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stellamonika:

I’d answer “yes” to your question, “Can science and philosophy explore nothingness?” – but would add my hope that science proceeds with reasonable caution. In addition, re. the two options you offer, I conclude that nothing (0) is distinguishable from something (S), for reasons outlined below. More details are in of my on-line book at zenofzero.net/docs/Awareness.pdf starting at “The bigger issue (maybe the biggest!) is the mind-boggling question: what is this universe?”

As I review there, it’s now fairly well established that “what’s here” (i.e., our universe) sums to nothing. That is, in our universe, in total, there’s no electrical charge, no linear or angular momentum, and when all mass is conceptually changed to energy (via E = mc^2), then the total energy (including the negative energy of “space” or “the vacuum”) also sums to zero. In the book I provide references and reasons supporting that (amazing!) result.

As suggested by Ed Tryon in a paper published in Nature (vol. 248, pp. 396 -397, 1974), that result suggests that our universe was formed via a symmetry-breaking fluctuation in a “total void” (the “original nothingness” or the “original zero”), yielding “something” (say, S) according to 0 = S – S. Based on what’s now in our universe, I expect that the “symmetry breaker” was some “piece” of positive energy (maybe a particle or maybe a “string” of energy) that “precipitated”, thereby being unavailable to rejoin with its negative energy counterpart, leading to the Big Bang. That is, my guess is that the original “creation event” was 0 = E – E, where E is what we’re pleased to call “positive” energy (much of which is now “condensed” as mass) and –E is the (negative) energy that fills what we call “space”.

Turning now to your question, “Can science and philosophy explore nothingness?”, certainly philosophy can (e.g., see hedweb.com/witherall/zero.htm ) but for many years I have been skeptical that science could, since I could think of only two examples of “total nothingness”, namely “outside” our universe and maybe within Black Holes – neither of which is a particularly “friendly” environment in which to perform experiments! Recently, however, I saw something that now seems obvious.

Thus, when “holes” appears in “space” (or “the vacuum”), we call such holes “anti-particles” (be they “natural”, e.g., positron decay of isotopes of krypton, or “manufactured” in accelerators). But if, following Dirac, we conclude that “space” is “brim full” of negative energy, then a “hole” in the “something” that we call “space” (or “the vacuum”) is actually an example of “totally nothing”! Thereby, “nothingness” appears to us (“living in the positive side of existence”) as antiparticles.

As a consequence, it seems that science can “explore nothingness” by exploring the behavior of antiparticles, e.g., the recent studies at CERN to form anti-atoms. I’ve not yet found reports of studies of anti-particle / anti-particle collisions, but that would seem to be another possible way to explore “nothingness”. It’s true that such examples of “nothingness” are quite limited, but it’s a start. Yet, some caution would seem to be appropriate, because if our universe is an example, then even minute samples of nothingness have a tendency to explode in a awfully Big Bang!

Corresponding philosophical studies can lead to interesting psychological considerations. Einstein already made a good start: “Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, [then] wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.” As an example of philosophical considerations with psychological consequences, one might modify his remark to something similar to: “Once you can accept the universe as something (which is actually nothing) expanding into nothing (which is a different kind of something), then the organized religions of the world seem supremely silly.” A statement along that line is a part of what I mean with my domain name “zen of zero”.

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Is nothingness equal to an immense void? with no temporal or spatial scales, no definitions? Descartes said before there are no voids in Nature…and if Nature is the world that makes us be…it would be very difficult , impossible to explain something that is not natural to our world or not of , or from our world… like when describing aliens in science-fiction books or movies humans always drew them as a caricature of their images…Large head. big eyes little bodies or different variable caricatural version of our animal life here,or our mythological legends . because our own nature is the only point of reference we got…so how can one understand something that cant exist in our world?
is our imagination of that nothingness is at fault as describing extraterrestial creatures? we humanize everything even animals (Disney did it) so we can understand or assimilate their existence better by relating…how can we relate or understand something out of the nature that makes us exist?
is nothingness can be described as a senseless vast unknown?
From our human world, down to the molecular and subatomic world, and up into the farthest reaches of the expanding universe…how to make sense of it and make peace with its darkness its quintessence or dark energy as physicists call it? because void and nothingness, the warp and the woof of the gravitional field are impossible to describe NATURALLY…

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damavava:

I agree with you: words fail.

That’s why I put all such words in quotation marks, e.g., “total void”, “original nothingness”, “original zero”, “outside [our universe]” – although I now see that my post was sloppy (my apologies), in that I used double quotation marks also around some other words that do correspond to something that exists within our universe. In the reference at zenofzero.net , I hope I was more successful, putting only single quotation marks around such words as ‘space’, ‘the vacuum’, etc.

That our words fail (because we have no experience with such concepts) is also why, in the reference, I refer to “the Tao that can be spoken about is not the real Tao” and in an Advanced Physics Thread (which you can google) I labeled the thread “The Tao of Physics and the Zen of Zero”. Nonetheless, it seems we must struggle along as best we can using approximate words (or mathematical models).

Thereby, in response to your first question, “Is nothingness equal to an immense void?”, I would first suggest that the question should be written: Is “nothingness” equal to an “immense void”? And my response to that question would be that either term is equally nondescriptive! Again: words fail.

Re. Descartes’ comment, I expect that he was writing about ‘space’ or ‘the vacuum’, which does exist. I agree with your comment: “It would be very difficult, impossible to explain something that is not natural to our world or not of, or from, our world.”

The point of my original post, however, was to suggest that glimpses of “the original total nothingness” seem to be available to us when ‘holes’ develop in ‘space’ or ‘the vacuum’. We see such ‘holes’ as ‘anti-particles’; I’m suggesting that “through them”, we can get glimpses of “the original zero”, and in that sense, of ‘nothingness’. [Note the single quotation marks!]

I grant you, however, that they’re rather special ‘peep holes’. The reason seems to be that the negative energy of space behaves similar to our more familiar positive energy, forming only special ‘resonances’ (which, when they occur on our ‘positive-energy side of reality’, we call ‘particles’ and which, when they occur on the ‘negative-energy side of reality’, we call ‘anti-particles’). Still, when holes develops in space, they seem to give us a peep-holes through which to see ‘nothingness’, thereby permitting some scientific studies of “the total void” that is presumed to “exist” “outside” our universe – which was my response to the question originally posed by stellamonika.

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An “Angel with the firery sword” is temporarily blocking the path into the void.
Quantum physics tells of pulsating / vibrating “massless energy” being the component of all; and that his stuff disappears in and out of our existing universe. If so, where does it (we) disappear to? This is where the path is blocked presently.