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Nothing was on the table at the annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate March 20th at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Here’s Hayden Planetarium Director Neil deGrasse Tyson talking with journalist Jim Holt, author of Why Does the World Exist, and physicist Lawrence Krauss, author of A Universe from Nothing.
Tyson: So Jim, when did philosophers start weighing in on this?
Holt: Really with Leibniz in the 17th century. He was the first thinker to pose the question “why is there something rather than nothing.” And by nothing, he meant a state in which there are (sic) no existence at all, there are no entities, there’s no chaos, there’s no space, no time, absolute nothingness. It’s very difficult to grasp in the imagination. If you try to obliterate all of the contents of your consciousness or try to imagine all of the contents of the universe slowly being extinguished, the stars going out, the atoms disappearing, life disappearing, time and space disappearing, even when you try to reach nothingness in your imagination, there’s still the little light of your consciousness creeping under the door. The only times I’ve succeeded in imagining absolute nothingness is during dreamless sleep and once while I was watching professional bowling on television.
Krauss: I think that what Jim has pointed out is exactly it. You’re absolutely right, there are some things that are essentially impossible to get an intuitive conception of. And that’s just a limitation of the fact that we’re classical human beings who didn’t evolve to intuitively understand quantum mechanics. So there’s lots of things in science that are impossible to get any intuitive handle on, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Holt: I completely agree with you. And I think that a state of absolute nothingness, even though we can’t envision it in our minds, it’s logically consistent, it’s a real possibility, and there is a genuine question—why is there a universe rather than absolute nothingness?
—Steve Mirsky
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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23 Comments
Add CommentI thought there was originally nothing. And from that nothing came an explosion of something (matter and anti-matter).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRegardless, I still feel like a dog trying to solve a rubik's cube.
It's hard to grasp anything without handles, even harder to grasp nothing without handles...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy brane hurts!
And at this point science ends. The question of why there is an universe instead of nothing is meaningless. In the latter case there would be nobody to ask the question. So the universe must exist.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis discussion reminds me of a favorite Asimov story about his argument with a professor about whether you can have a "half a piece of chalk."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust recalled the half piece of chalk argument was part of a discussion about imaginary numbers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSurely this is easy. Nothing is nothing, ie, no thing, no atoms, no subatomic particles, no radiation of any description, no Dark Matter, no Dark Energy, no thoughts, no considerations of why or what nothing may be, no Philosophers and no creatures of any type. What's the problem?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor me the matter of this podcast is METAPHYSICS and not Astronomy or Astrophysics, although this theme had been debated in an encounter that happened in a Planetarium.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe title of the debate was ‘The Existence of Nothing’ and from the first link presented in the podcast we can see the following text put below of a picture of the audience in the scenario of the debate:
‘The concept of nothing is as old as zero itself. How do we grapple with the concept of nothing? From the best laboratory vacuums on Earth to the vacuum of space to what lies beyond, the idea of nothing continues to intrigue professionals and the public alike.’
In my opinion Metaphysics in practical terms serves for absolutely nothing. Yes, it is what I think.
Below two links that define Metaphysics,
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/metaphysics
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/descriptive+metaphysics
There can be no concept of nothing. A concept is always something. Nothingness must include an absence of all concepts, and an absence of everything we can measure, think about, or discuss.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat if nothing is really a superposition of everything?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSure, it has no size, no dimensions, no mass, and exhibits no measurable forces; however, in the same way that white light is a superposition of all frequencies of colored light, perhaps nothing can be manipulated in some similar way, like a prism does for white light to break it apart in to frequencies of colored light.
Even the tiniest imperfection in the absolute perfection of nothingness might trigger the superposition of everything to split in some way that causes infinity of everything to come pouring out.
I can't believe I just wrote that.
It all makes sense. Everything is existing as nothing, even as we exist right now - we are part of the grand nothingness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile we can't directly observe it from our frame of reference, our universe is just one frequency in the grand superposition white light of everything that is ultimately nothing. We just can't see the other items that are superpositioning along side with us. But somehow our universe combines with those other elements, causing the grand superposition, which after-all, is just nothing.
The church now defines nothing as that what existed before god created the universe or multi-verse. This itself is problematic, obviously god existed before nothing, now that's not nothing. So they are absolutely wrong on this one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps nothing is what exists at exactly absolute zero. Go negative you get anti-of-everything, positive you get what we know exist, dark energy, dark matter and matter. This simplifies everything to a scalar.
"Even the tiniest imperfection in the absolute perfection of nothingness..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSure! But the tiniest imperfection is always "something".
We cannot in reality talk about nothing. If we describe the subject as 'nothing', that's just a metaphor. We must always talk about something. To literally talk about 'nothing' is an oxymoron.
What we can talk about are misconceptions about the definition of the word nothing, and a definition is, of course, something.
Of all the arguments or rational solutions of all time, nothingness is the simplest, fairest and most robust. Existence of any kind is akin to time travel in it's inherent complexities. Once reason aproaches existence, though, there is little turning back. The weakest rationale for exuistence could set off a chain reaction so furtive that billions of years later, even some of the brighter organisms created might have a hard time imagining what preceded it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNothing is a gorgeous argument hanging perfectly balanced between opposites, a glamourous potential that quietly pleads to remain pure.
All of existance, including man can be thought of as the impureties in that argument. The leeds in the wine of nothingness. The existence of one impurety increases the probability of the next, and so on. No end in sight.
Under a framework like that many previously unimaginable thing seem not only possible, but in some cases, downright unstoppable. Within the context of a relative universe, though, we may simply be imagining some daily function in the life of a well adjusted ant.
Cheers
In order to discuss nothingness you must decide to frame the discussion within the parameters of physical existence. It can be assumed that the metaphysical interpretations of such things are dependent on thoses things primarily. This is why this must be a scientific discussion. Any reference to specific folklore except to support pre-existing physical circumstance is counterproductive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe basic problem is why there is something rather than nothing. If the universe did start in the big bang, ie there was nothing before it, what was the impetus for creation? Or if the universe has existed forever why does it exist at all?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think our difficulty with these questions lies in our intuition that the universe is an orderly place, that laws of nature drive the processes that we experience.
There is an alternate view, that laws are merely human descriptions, not driving forces. And if there are no laws that drive nature then anything can and will happen. The fact that the universe appears orderly is just because our little patch could not be any other way for us to exist to wonder about it.
IMO, this article is an excellent example of nothing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Universe is deaf, dumb, and blind.Without us to witness it, it might as well not exist.Stars explode in complete silence.Nothing sees it happening(except us)What is it all for? It is for us to wonder at.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNothing cannot be but a concept as ZERO exists. No number
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisless than 1 or more than ten could exist. It must be invented, and so it was long time ago.
Nothing cannot be but a concept as ZERO exists. No number
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisless than 1 or more than ten could exist. It must be invented, and so it was long time ago.
One of Dr. Asimov's contemporary writers, Roger Zelazny, was working on this subject when he wrote in "Creatures of Light and Darkness" in a stream-of-consciousness kind of way, "…One snowflake drifting down a well, a well without waters, without walls, without bottom, without top. Now take away the snowflake and consider the drifting…"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNothing; is a cold hearted idea.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAristotle is said to have nightmares about this concept [Horror Vacui]...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is there outside of the universe? Nothing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere would I be if I left the universe? Nowhere.