On 08 May 2012, at 21:46, John Mikes wrote:
Ricardo:
good text! I may add to it:
"Who created Nothing? - of course: Nobody". (The ancient joke of
Odysseus towards Polyphemos: 'Nobody' has hurt me).
Just one thing: if it contains (includes) EMPTY SPACE, it includes
space, it is not nothing. And please, do not forget about my adage
in the previous post that limits (borders) are similarly not
includable into nothing, so it must be an infinite - well - "nothing".
It still may contain things we have no knowledge about and in such
case it is NOT nothing. We just are ignorant.
Also, I can make a critic to 'nothing' or 'everything' similar to my
critics of how Stephen use the term "existence". It is a word, and it
can belong to a theory only if there is an axiomatic for it, or a semi-
axiomatic. You have to be able to give some sense of some "thing" to
define or point on "no-thing". At the metalevel, nothing and
everything are coextensive.
Bruno
JM
On Sun, May 6, 2012 at 1:06 PM, R AM <ramra...@gmail.com> wrote:
Some thoughts about "nothing":
- If nothing has no properties, and a limitation is considered a
property, then "nothing" cannot have any limitations, including the
limitation of generating "something". Therefore, "something" may
come from "nothing".
- Given that something exists, it is possible that something exists
(obviously). The later would be true even if "nothing" was the case.
Therefore, we should envision the state of "nothing" co-existing
with the possibility of "something" existing, which is rather bizarre.
- Why should "nothing" be the default state? I think this is based
on the intuition that "nothing" would require no explanation,
whereas "something" requires an explanation. However, given that the
possibility of something existing is necessarily true, an
explanation would be required for why there is "nothing" instead of
"something".
- There are many ways something can exist, but just one of nothing
existing. Therefore, "nothing" is less likely :-)
- I think the intuition that "nothing" requires less explanation
than the universe we observe is based on a generalization of the
idea of classical empty space. However, this intuition is based on
what we know about *this* universe (i.e. empty space is simpler than
things existing in it). But why this intuition about *our* reality
should be extrapolated to metaphysics?
- I think that the important question is why this universe instead
of any other universe? (including "nothing").
Ricardo.
On Sun, May 6, 2012 at 6:24 PM, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com>
wrote:
On Sat, May 5, 2012 John Mikes <jami...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is it so hard to understand a "word"?
Yes, the word "nothing" keeps evolving. Until about a hundred years
ago "nothing" just meant a vacuum, space empty of any matter; then a
few years later the meaning was expanded to include lacking any
energy too, then still later it meant also not having space, and
then it meant not even having time. Something that is lacking matter
energy time and space may not be the purest form of nothing but it
is, you must admit, a pretty pitiful "thing", and if science can
explain (and someday it very well may be able to) how our world with
all it's beautiful complexity came to be from such modest beginnings
then that would not be a bad days work, and to call such activities
"incredibly shallow" as some on this list have is just idiotic.
> N O T H I N G - is not a set of anything, no potential
Then the question "can something come from nothing?" has a obvious
and extremely dull answer.
> I wrote once a little silly 'ode' about ontology. I started:
"In the beginning there was Nothingness.
And when Nothingness realised it's nothingness
It turned into Somethingness
Then your version of nothing had something, the potential to produce
something. I also note the use of the word "when", thus time, which
is something, existed in your "nothing" universe as well as potential.
John K Clark
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
