Much Ado About Nothing

Nothing can really be everything.

Strawberry Fields Forever Courtesy: borishudak.com

(CALGARY, Alberta) - We were sitting on a park bench watching the joggers go by when my friend remarked: “You know, all these people who jog, go to the gym, eat granola, don’t drink and don’t smoke, are going to be mighty embarrassed one day when they are lying in a hospital bed dying of nothing in particular.”

After I finished laughing, I was intrigued by the topic of “nothing” and decided to check (through the wonder of computer technology) my research notes, only to discover that “nothing” covers “everything”.

In the beginning, there was nothing.

Then God created light.

There was still nothing.

But now you could see it.

“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.”

“Who did you pass on the road?” the King went on, holding out his hand to the messenger for some more hay.

“Nobody,” said the messenger.

“Quite right,” said the King: “this young lady saw him too. So of course Nobody walks slower than you.”

“I do my best,” the messenger said in a sulky tone. “I’m sure nobody walks much faster than I do!”

“He can’t do that,” said the King, “or else he’d have been here first.

Through the Looking Glass

*******************

I am a nobody, and nobody is perfect; therefore, I am perfect.

*******************

“Nobody is a friend of ours. Let's face it.” (Richard Nixon)

*******************

"When they get home, when they get out of Parliament, when they are 50 yards from Parliament Hill, they are no longer honourable members, they are just nobodies." (Pierre Trudeau, late former Prime Minister of Canada)

*******************

“You can be sure that nothing can be achieved solely by preaching reason.” (Albert Einstein)

*******************

“Gambling is an almost certain way of getting nothing for something.” (Milton Berle)

*******************

There’s nothing like a dame,

But there’s more if it around.

(Lawrence Ferlinghetti, beat poet)

*******************

“Nothing is real…” (Beatles—Strawberry Fields Forever)

*******************

“Nothin’ is real… (Pat Benatar—In the Heat of the Night)

*******************

If everything in the universe is added together—matter, energy, gravity, rate of cosmic expansion, and all the intermediate reckonings—the total is zero. There are equal amounts of positive and negative energy in the universe—matter as frozen energy and energy as matter in motion in a cosmic expansion. In a final analysis, the sum of everything is nothing. The question becomes: Why is there something, rather than nothing?

*******************

At a physics conference in 1973, Edward Tryon, now at Hunter College in Manhattan, asked (initially tongue in cheek): What if the universe is a vacuum fluctuation? The more he thought about it, the more seriously he took the idea until he wrote a paper, “Is the Universe a Vacuum Fluctuation?” which appeared in Nature, suggesting that in our universe positive mass-energy is balanced by negative gravitational potential energy. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics actually allows something tiny to arise from nothing, as long as it lasts only an instant. The smaller it is, the longer it can last. Because everything in the universe adds up to nothing, Tryon suggested that empty space sometimes divides—and for an infinitesimal second becomes something. The smaller this something is, the longer it can potentially exist. So, if the universe is a zero, it can exist forever.

*******************

“The first principle of cosmology must be: There is nothing outside the universe.” (Lee Smolin, cosmologist)

*******************

"[Cosmology] is such an esoteric science, creation from nothing. You can come away with your interpretations and there is no way to check them. It's like a religion." (Andrei Linde, cosmologist)

*******************

“Theoretical and experimental physicists are now studying nothing at all—the vacuum. But that nothingness contains all of being.” (Heinz Pagels, physicist)

*******************

"In the state of innocence, there is peace and serenity, but in addition to that there is something else... But what is it? Nothingness. What effect has Nothingness? It arouses fear." (Sören Kierkegaard)

*******************

Nothing exists.

Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it.

Even if something could be known about it, knowledge about it can't be communicated to others.

Gorgias (c. 483–375 BCE)

*******************

Literature Nobelist and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus began his book The Myth of Sisyphus:

“There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”

According to Camus, the message of suicide was that a person lacked the strength to face "nothing." Life is an experience with no final meaning, but still worth the effort. Since there is nothing else, life should be lived to its fullest and meaning derived from human existence itself. To Camus, people were what gave life meaning. But, in the moments following the realization that you, your descendants—in fact, the earth and sun will die, a deep anxiety appears.

*******************

Cosmologist Alan Sandage says:

“As astronomers you can’t say anything except that here is a miracle, what seems almost supernatural, an event which has come across the horizon into science, through the big bang. Can you go the other way, back outside the barrier and finally find the answer to the question of why there is something rather than nothing? No, you cannot, not within science. But it still remains an incredible mystery: Why is there is something instead of nothing?”

*******************

The opposite of nothing is infinity. Carl Jung asked:

“The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? that is the telling question of his life….If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change. In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential we embody, and if we do not embody that, life is wasted.”

*******************

"The relationship between the human mind and physical reality is a subtle one. Quantum theory has raised a serious if ambiguous question as to the independence of mind and matter. It tells us that an observer has a random and unpredictable effect on what is observed. I cannot observe an electron without disturbing it. This suggest that physical reality (whatever it is) cannot be independent of the human mind that observes it. Our view of reality must of necessity be colored by the aesthetic and metaphorical themes of our consciousness." (Physicist, Roger S. Jones)

*******************

In the 18th century Italian mathematician Luigi Guido Grandi developed a number series, now called the Grandi Series. It is:

1 – 1 + 1 – 1 + 1 …

The total of the series depends on how the terms are grouped.

(1 – 1) + (1 – 1) + … = 0

1 + (– 1 + 1) + ( – 1 + 1) + … = 1

The result, said Grandi, is that 0 = 1 which, he suggested, was the sort of algorithm that God must have used to create something from nothing.