yeah all these guys were trying to understand why they could intuit that there can’t be ‘nothing’, while at the same time being unable to put a finger on the ‘thing’ that was fundamental to the ‘something’ that has to logically exist. this is what the dudes in the eleatic school spent all day trying to figure out. something has to exist. yeah but everything changes, so it isn’t what it is, or was, rather. well whatever it is, or becomes, it has to remain something nonetheless. stuff like that.
today we understand the same problem, but with our much more advanced knowledge of physics, we’ve been able to narrow it down to a very special kind of mystery that we may never figure out; the contradiction between the second and third law of thermodynamics (or maybe it’s the third and fourth law. can’t remember. two of em, anyway; conservation of energy and entropy). how can we reconcile the fact that something must always exist, with the fact that systems are always approaching a total state of entropy? how can something keep existing if it uses up all its energy… but then if something stops existing, where does it go and what happens next. it can’t be ‘nothing’, shirley.
google ‘eternal recurrence’ and check out all the arguments for and against the basic idea. there isn’t any proof for it, no, but there are some pretty damn believable lines of reasoning for it in one variation or another.
i like to approach the matter by inverting pascal’s wager into something purely bohemian and evil. it’s like this; if there is no eternal recurrence, and i’m an evil bohemian, then it doesn’t matter. but if there is the eternal recurrence, and i’m an evil bohemian, i’m able to experience the pleasures of my bonhomie every time.
but if the eternal recurrence is true, and i’m not an evil bohemian, i end up being a sucka every time.
fuck that.