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Let’s have more discussions about nothing

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jbark said:
NOTHING is contained in the set of EVERYTHING, by definition.
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Definitions might be the trouble. Mistaking the symbols for a reality. Without definitions there is no delineation; No separate things; No universe; no in; no out; no is; no isn't, before or after.

Take away all definitions, then say what is left. Not even the nothing we define nothing as. :?

ya know?
 
polytrip said:
jbark said:
NOTHING is contained in the set of EVERYTHING, by definition.
Click to expand...
Except ofcourse for, everything that doesn't exist:wink: .
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"EVERYTHING that doesn't exist".

You've said the same thing, but differently. If it doesn't exist, it is still in the set of EVERYTHING - according to your sentence. 😉

JBArk
 
..hey, here's an old Rumi quote to throw in the mix (surely a litte sufi mysticism can't hurt?)
Since existence is to be found in nonexistence, while nothing exists in existence, a fire entered the spirit and consumed it's existence...
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(..thanks to souljourney for digging it up:))

..the sufi POV is that what we think of as existing is in fact created in the mind of god, so does not really exist, and all that really exists is what is usually thought not to really exist..
.
 
DeMenTed wrote:
Nothing doesn't exist
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..then maybe nothing exists..if there's a word, there's a concept (which exists)..
i maintain that Nothing (in the language sense) ="does not exist" or "potential for something"..

does "not exist" exist or not?

the spiritual meaning of Nothing is well described by Embracethevoid, and the philosophical/logical by Longshot, earlier..

i reiterate..if i draw just Yin, then i have in effect drawn Yang, although there is nothing there (where Yang is)..

"existence" has no meaning without "nonexistence"



this anti-Nothing philosophy is, to me, going back to Aristotle and St. Augustine, who were very suspicious of it..hence European mathematics was retarded for over 1000 years...


ps. Rumi says, to find existence we must first understand nonexistence...
 
nen888 said:
DeMenTed wrote:
Nothing doesn't exist
Click to expand...
..then maybe nothing exists..if there's a word, there's a concept (which exists)..
i maintain that Nothing (in the language sense) ="does not exist" or "potential for something"..

does "not exist" exist or not?

the spiritual meaning of Nothing is well described by Embracethevoid, and the philosophical/logical by Longshot, earlier..

i reiterate..if i draw just Yin, then i have in effect drawn Yang, although there is nothing there (where Yang is)..

"existence" has no meaning without "nonexistence"




this anti-Nothing philosophy is, to me, going back to Aristotle and St. Augustine, who were very suspicious of it..hence European mathematics was retarded for over 1000 years...


ps. Rumi says, to find existence we must first understand nonexistence...
Click to expand...

I mean that there is no such thing as nothing. Maybe we cant see anything but there ia somwthing there, maybe its dark matter or energy. Who knows?
 
..i guess there's always probability (or possibility) which is something (non material),
i'm more arguing that our word 'nothing' isn't totally meaningless, that nothing or zero exists in the mathematical universe, and that absolute nothing (even in a partitioned sector of reality) may be possible..so i see what you mean DeMenTed..'nothing doesn't actually exist'..but perhaps non-existence is a required logical outcome of existence...
 
Here's a recent artical, about the book, "A Universe from Nothing" that probably covers this topic well. It's also based off a popular youtube video that's been shared here. (The article has a link to the video)

Since it's relevant I thought I'd share. I plan on getting this book soon, should be a good read! :)

There's More to Nothing Than We Knew

I particularly like this quote at the end of the article

If nothing is our past, it could also be our future. As the universe, driven by dark energy — that is to say, the negative pressure of nothing — expands faster and faster, the galaxies will become invisible, and all the energy and information will be sucked out of the cosmos. The universe will revert to nothingness.

Nothing to nothing.

One day it’s all going to seem like a dream.

But who is or was the dreamer?
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Here is also an excerpt from "A Universe from Nothing" provided by the webpage.

A UNIVERSE FROM NOTHING
142
laws of nature. A god who can create the laws of nature can
presumably also circumvent them at will. Although why they
would have been circumvented so liberally thousands of years
ago, before the invention of modern communication instruments
that could have recorded them, and not today, is still
something to wonder about.
In any case, even in a universe with no miracles, when you
are faced with a profoundly simple underlying order, you can
draw two different conclusions. One, drawn by Newton himself,
and earlier espoused by Galileo and a host of other scientists
over the years, was that such order was created by a divine intelligence
responsible not only for the universe, but also for our
own existence, and that we human beings were created in her
image (and apparently other complex and beautiful beings were
not!). The other conclusion is that the laws themselves are all
that exist. These laws themselves require our universe to come
into existence, to develop and evolve, and we are an irrevocable
by- product of these laws. The laws may be eternal, or they too
may have come into existence, again by some yet unknown but
possibly purely physical process.
Philosophers, theologians, and sometimes scientists continue
to debate these possibilities. We do not know for certain which
of them actually describes our universe, and perhaps we shall
never know. But the point is, as I emphasized at the very beginning
of this book, the nal arbiter of this question will not come
from hope, desire, revelation, or pure thought. It will come, if it
ever does, from an exploration of nature. Dream or nightmare,
as Jacob Bronowski said in the opening quote in the book—
and one person’s dream in this case can easily be another’s
nightmare—we need to live our experience as it is and with our
eyes open. The universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not.
And here, I think it is extremely signicant that a universe

Nothing Is Something
143
from nothing—in a sense I will take pains to describe—that
arises naturally, and even inevitably, is increasingly consistent
with everything we have learned about the world. This learning
has not come from philosophical or theological musings about
morality or other speculations about the human condition. It is
instead based on the remarkable and exciting developments in
empirical cosmology and particle physics that I have described.
I want thus to return to the question I described at the beginning
of this book: Why is there something rather than nothing?
We are now presumably in a better position to address this, having
reviewed the modern scientic picture of the universe, its
history, and its possible future, as well as operational descriptions
of what “nothing” might actually comprise. As I also
alluded to at the beginning of this book, this question too has
been informed by science, like essentially all such philosophical
questions. Far from providing a framework that forces upon
us the requirement of a creator, the very meaning of the words
involved have so changed that the sentence has lost much of its
original meaning—something that again is not uncommon, as
empirical knowledge shines a new light on otherwise dark corners
of our imagination.
At the same time, in science we have to be particularly cautious
about “why” questions. When we ask, “Why?” we usually
mean “How?” If we can answer the latter, that generally suf-
ces for our purposes. For example, we might ask: “Why is the
Earth 93 million miles from the Sun?” but what we really probably
mean is, “How is the Earth 93 million miles from the Sun?”
That is, we are interested in what physical processes led to the
Earth ending up in its present position. “Why” implicitly suggests
purpose, and when we try to understand the solar system
in scientic terms, we do not generally ascribe purpose to it.
Click to expand...
 
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