Can 'Nothing' Exist? (school, elect, state, religion)
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This question is one of the more deeper, more philosophical questions that I've never been able to answer and probably never will come up with a result for no matter your answers. Pretty much when I was about 9 years old, I began asking questions such as 'Does God really exist?', 'Are we all really smaller in the universe than we think we are?' and 'Can nothing exist?' Well none of them have been answered but I've came up with my own belief for them, but the question of nothing still remains. If the universe didnt exist at all, what would it be? I always try to imagine nothing but it's just not possible. If it were a huge void, it would be just that, a void. It wouldn't be a huge white or black area because that would be something. So I'm still lost in this question but I'm looking for what others believe that nothing or this void I speak of, would or better yet wouldn't be.
I always try to think of life when asking this question, where do we even come from? Where does life actually begin? I'm not asking those questions but that's what my question is related to ultimately.
Thinking of this scientifically rather than philosophically.
The Big Bang (actually a rapid expansion, not an explosion) model is science's best explanation for why the cosmos appears as it does. It also says that it is possible that before the Big Bang there was nothing.
It is probably impossible for human beings to understand in a conventional way what nothing is. As science has advanced, many things that are probably impossible to understand in a conventional way are being discovered.
For instance, Richard Feynman (Nobel Prize winning physicist) said that nobody understands quantum mechanics. Some very smart people understand the mathematics of it, but even they don't understand it in a conventional way.
To understand things in a conventional way, humans have to find a metaphor for it in the everyday world we evolved in and our brains and senses evolved to understand – the world of Newtonian physics, more or less. Since there is nothing in this everyday world that remotely resembles quantum mechanics, we really can't have this conventional way of understanding it.
Since there is nothing in the everyday world that seems to indicate that things are created out of nothing, we tend to believe that it is impossible for the universe to have been created out of nothing. But why not?
When I look at this philosophically, my brain hurts. And unfortunately, our human minds and human experience are so limited, that in may ways, what the OP suggested is forever beyond our comprehension. Even basic comprehension of the distances and size of the Universe are truly incomprehensible.
As to "nothing", we are taught our Universe is everything, and is expanding at a rapid pace. What is it expanding into? Nothing? If something already contains everything, what is left for it to expand into? Is it expanding into itself? This is the part that hurts my brain because something that expands needs something to expand into, right? Unless there is a nameless void (cue Star Trek music) at the edge of the expanding universe which truly is "nothing".
In today's society, I believe we do suffer under the religion of science. Scientists present theories that are then presented as "fact" to students. Atomic theory for example. Pretty good theory, and explains why certain elements stick together in specific quantities. This article is a great example:
I read the article and it explains or validates nothing. In fact, I'd suggest that the scientists truly have no idea what they're really looking at. And what the heck does an atom even look like anyways.
Same with the Big Bang. So there was this inifinitely dense ball of matter the size of Earth (which doesn't fit atomic theory, now that I think about it) that contains "everything", then it blew up, and we had a moon, oceans, dinosaurs, jumbo jets, and telephone poles. Excuse me? There's just a few too many "when we figure it out, we'll let you know" steps between "overly dense ball of matter" and "telephone poles" for my liking.
So really, when it comes to any scientific explanation of "nothing" or "something" or where it came from, I am completely skeptical. Often I believe that the religion of science can become as limiting to our comprehension and understanding as traditional theism was in the 1500's.
And every 20 years, we can look back and see how little we knew 20 years ago. Which begs the question: will humans ever understand this? One day we may, but I don't expect it in my lifetime.
This question is one of the more deeper, more philosophical questions that I've never been able to answer and probably never will come up with a result for no matter your answers. Pretty much when I was about 9 years old, I began asking questions such as 'Does God really exist?', 'Are we all really smaller in the universe than we think we are?' and 'Can nothing exist?' Well none of them have been answered but I've came up with my own belief for them, but the question of nothing still remains. If the universe didnt exist at all, what would it be? I always try to imagine nothing but it's just not possible. If it were a huge void, it would be just that, a void. It wouldn't be a huge white or black area because that would be something. So I'm still lost in this question but I'm looking for what others believe that nothing or this void I speak of, would or better yet wouldn't be.
I always try to think of life when asking this question, where do we even come from? Where does life actually begin? I'm not asking those questions but that's what my question is related to ultimately.
Let the debates begin!
My view: it's impossible for something to happen out of nothing.
"Nothing" would mean no space, no energy, no particles of any kind. Nothing. Really nothing.
I think that people take something like "empty space filled with particles which are not visible to our naked eye" and call it "nothing". So if earth came from this something, then it was NOT out of nothing.
i think if it were nothing. then God would not be present. yes. a spiritual answer to a unfathomable question. Telephones and voids alike. without energy of any kind there would be absence. God is not in absence, but presence. omnipresence. but our minds are limited to perceptions, presence. ever hear how loud a small sound is, think about the space it must travel and still create a distortion in space time but mathematically travel perfectly to be interpreted by our electrical/chemical brain experience. or how which is fastest sound light or thought? light travels so fast, perfectly. as to be able to assimilate the objects clearly... limited to interference. but can a thought out travel light? how could the energy be measured? for a thought must be something but it appears as nothing in our discernible energy spectrum, for it exist even as outwardly you could not percieve one passing you by (does a thought come from nothing? can a word speak itself?) or how the only possible thing that makes our universe something is truly light, forth comes energy, heat, illumination. and think about this, what other force can overcome darkness??? yet our experience of this source is not truly appreciated, only it is overlooked as we wonder if God really said 'let there be light, in the beginning' i might reply outside of God is nothing. how wonderful is something? how blessed are we to experience light? thats not a brainteaser, but revelation. even if the readers mind is seperated and cannot go there willingly.
Last edited by Letter_Rip; 05-28-2013 at 10:08 AM..
Reason: clarity
Hi. Look up Lawrence Krauss on youtube. He has a fascinating discussion on this. The gist is that "nothing" or a void, or whatever you would like to call it, is unstable and has to produce "something"!!!
If you are interested in quantum mechanics at all, he is a good source of info.
Good luck!
Last edited by JoanD'Arc; 05-28-2013 at 10:13 AM..
But is our something expanding into truly nothing? If the universe is everything, yet it is expanding, what is it expanding into? Owww, my head hurts again.
@Terryj - isn't that the truth?
Space isn't expanding outward into something from a central point like a balloon inflating. If the universe is flat, infinite, and without edge or boundaries like the data suggests it is, then by definition it doesn't need to be expanding into anything, but rather all of infinite space itself is growing larger everywhere all at once.
Personally, I have always found understanding such concepts to be very easy and intuitive. I can just... visualize them.
I've always wondered this, since I was a little kid. Except, my question was from a different perspective. I've never wondered if "nothing" exists, because, clearly, it does. What I wonder is, how does anything exist? At some point, everything came from nothing. No light, darkness, consciousness, or thought, no matter whatsoever.
Because science, as we know it, is so completely incapable of explaining this (and no, the big bang theory still relies upon the existence of space, time, and matter), I am drawn to believe that our universe may be as insignificant as a grain of sand in the Sahara Desert, and that we are so far from comprehension of our existence, and that the complexity of such would literally short circuit our brains.
...I always try to think of life when asking this question, where do we even come from? Where does life actually begin? I'm not asking those questions but that's what my question is related to ultimately.
Let the debates begin!
You might find this book interesting. It is about the least ponderous and overwhelming introduction the Madhyamika school of philosophy, which focuses on some of the questions you have raised. Don't be put off by "verses," this is not a book of pretty poetry.
My own thought on whether nothing exists tends toward the view that "nothing" is a word, and as such it exists; but, in fact, I don't know what the word can get pasted onto (so to speak.) In the same vein (perhaps) I can understand "empty" (and "full") in relation to a container, but I cannot get my head around the idea of "empty" if there is no container.
At this point, I usually decide it is safer to hold colloquoy with my neighbor's cat.
Space isn't expanding outward into something from a central point like a balloon inflating. If the universe is flat, infinite, and without edge or boundaries like the data suggests it is, then by definition it doesn't need to be expanding into anything, but rather all of infinite space itself is growing larger everywhere all at once.
Personally, I have always found understanding such concepts to be very easy and intuitive. I can just... visualize them.
Man, an IQ test says I am a pretty smart guy, but I can't visualize this they way you do.
If it is flat, infinite, and without edge or boundary, how can it "expand"? it already goes forever - by definition "forever" and "everything" are everything. If everything can get bigger, than it really isn't everything, is it?
Wow, quite paradoxical.
Plus, if we subscribe to the Big Bang Theory (scientific concept, not TV show), then the Universe should be expanding like a balloon from a central point (the origin of the Big Bang) in three dimensions (I'll excluding the fourth dimension -the time dilation created by our rapid celestial motion away from the centre of the Big Bang.)
Which hurts the head again, is if we consider that if the entire Universe (everything, infinitely) was once all contained in a definable state of energy, heat, and primordial elements before "Banging". So "everything" changes in size. Where does it expand to? Well, that's about as close to the definition of "nothing" as I can get.
There we go, "Nothing" can exist - it is anything that is not part of everything, which I will define as the known Universe.
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Ow, my poor brain.
