Does nothing exist?
Posted by: Chillkram on 16 November 2006
And by the act of existing does it subsequently negate itself and become something.
What actually is nothing? We use the word to mean the absence of something, but even the vacuum of space contains something. If not matter then forces, or light, or the 'fabric' of spacetime itself which we are told is curved. If it has a shape it cannot be nothing.
Did nothing exist before the big bang or act of creation (delete according to belief) and will it exist after the destruction or has the universe always existed? Is there in fact no such thing as nothing?
Is nothing what we experience when we are dead? Although, being dead, we cannot experience it as there is no conscious. Can nothing only be nothing if it is observed to be so or, by being observed does it become something again?
I guess I have always assumed the natural state of the universe to be nothing and the something that we observe has been imposed upon it, but perhaps the natural state is actually of something and that nothing is only a concept that could not possibly be.
Obviously this is a topic that philosophers have discussed down the years but I wondered if anyone else had any thoughts on this.
Mark
What actually is nothing? We use the word to mean the absence of something, but even the vacuum of space contains something. If not matter then forces, or light, or the 'fabric' of spacetime itself which we are told is curved. If it has a shape it cannot be nothing.
Did nothing exist before the big bang or act of creation (delete according to belief) and will it exist after the destruction or has the universe always existed? Is there in fact no such thing as nothing?
Is nothing what we experience when we are dead? Although, being dead, we cannot experience it as there is no conscious. Can nothing only be nothing if it is observed to be so or, by being observed does it become something again?
I guess I have always assumed the natural state of the universe to be nothing and the something that we observe has been imposed upon it, but perhaps the natural state is actually of something and that nothing is only a concept that could not possibly be.
Obviously this is a topic that philosophers have discussed down the years but I wondered if anyone else had any thoughts on this.
Mark
There is also the theory that if pigs had wings they would fly. 