Concept
Nothing
Overview
Nothing, no-thing, or no thing is the complete absence of anything, as the opposite of something and an antithesis of everything. The concept of nothing has been a matter of philosophical debate since at least the 5th century BCE. Early Greek philosophers argued that it was impossible for nothing to "exist". The atomists allowed nothing but only in the spaces between the invisibly small atoms. For them, all space was filled with atoms. Aristotle took the view that there exists matter and there exists space, a receptacle into which matter objects can be placed. This became the paradigm for classical scientists of the modern age, like Isaac Newton. Nevertheless, some philosophers, like René Descartes, continued to argue against the existence of empty space until the scientific discovery of a physical vacuum.
Existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger (as interpreted by Sartre) have associated nothing with consciousness. Some writers have made connections between Heidegger's concept of nothing and the nirvana of Eastern religions.
Modern science does not equate vacuum with nothing. The vacuum in quantum field theory is filled with virtual particles. The quantum vacuum is often viewed as a modern version of an aether theory.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Thus is implanted in us the idea that reality fills a void, and that Nothing, conceived as an absence of everything, pre-exists before all things in right, if not in fact. It is this illusion that we have tried to remove by showing that the idea of Nothing, if we try to see in it that of an annihilation of all things, is self-destructive and reduced to a mere word; and that if, on the contrary, it is truly an idea…
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution
Names Nothing several times; states what Nothing is.
This advance is the logical deduction and the movement of thought exhibited in the sequel. The reflection which finds a profounder connotation for Being and Nothing is nothing but logical thought, through which such connotation is evolved, not, however, in an accidental, but a necessary way. Every signification, therefore, in which they afterwards appear, is only a more precise specification and truer definition of…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
Names Nothing several times; states what Nothing is.
Second Theory.—The theory of all philosophers whose opinions and works are known to us is this: It is impossible to assume that God produced anything from nothing, or that He reduces anything to nothing; that is to say, it is impossible that an object consisting of matter and form should be produced when that matter is absolutely absent, or that it should be destroyed in such a manner that that matter be absolutely…
Moses Maimonides, The guide for the perplexed
Names Nothing several times; states what Nothing is.
Philosophers who discussed Nothing
- Gilles Deleuze
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Philipp Mainländer
- Jean-Luc Marion
- Julius Bahnsen
- F. C. S. Schiller
- Franco Volpi (philosopher)
Related ideas
- John Scotus Eriugena
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Isaac Newton
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Zhuang Zhou
- Karl Popper
- Ancient Greek philosophy
- Leucippus
- Luminiferous aether
- Being and Nothingness
- Monism
- Aether (classical element)
- Matter
- Śūnyatā
- Nirvana
- Plato
- Parmenides
- Pantheism
- Quantum field theory
- René Descartes
- Socrates
- Special relativity
- Space
- Spacetime
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Existence.