Nothing Matters

Was there always something?

Ronald Green — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 07:21:20 +0000

This is another question that was asked after one of my talks. I suppose I had it coming, considering what I had been saying till then. After all, an eternal something is the conclusion that one would come to after my forthright position that something cannot come from nothing.

The reason I got to this is simply by defining Nothing as the absence of everything. This definition is important – essential even. If we define Nothing as anything else, then we are having the cake and eating it, as Lawrence Krauss does by positing that a universe can come from nothing. But, as I mentioned in my previous blog, if nothing is something, i.e. it has something there to start with, then there need be no question as to how something can come from nothing. So if something can come from nothing, then a whole universe can, given the right conditions.

But I digress… No, not really.

There are two problems with positing something as having always been around. One is the concept of eternity. That sounds better when it is referred to as infinity, right? Eternity sounds so…well…religious. Infinity, on the other hand, has a more scientific aura. But let’s face it, they are basically the same concept.

And that brings us to the second big problem with the notion of something having always been around. It is the idea of causation, and particularly the existence of a first cause (or First Cause, with capital letters to make it more ominous).

Now causation is not normally a problem in science; in fact, it is the principle upon which science runs. Science looks for causes of phenomena in nature, that had previously been attributed to the supernatural. So while both science and religion take on board the fact of cause and effect, science is busy looking for causes, while religion already has the cause of everything – God.

The problem for science and causes is the supposed beginning of the universe. What, in fact, caused the universe to come about? If we wish to use the Big Bang as a theory for the start of everything, the question is: what caused the Big Bang?

Whether it wants to or not, science needs to face that question, because everything in science has a cause. There is no effect without a cause.

Yet when it comes to the Big Bang, we are told that it was the beginning. No cause. The beginning of time and of space. We are not allowed to ask what came before, because such a question is “nonsensical”.

But I do ask it, and I do so because I think that it makes sense to ask how something can come from nothing, and if it did, how?

And this is where the first cause comes in and why science looks at the idea with such horror. It does so because the first cause (or the uncaused cause) has always been associated with proof for the existence of God. The basic premise is that if something caused the universe to exist, it must be God. But this does not have to be, and there are a number of theories that dare to ask and are coming out with all sorts of things, like cyclical universes, the multiverse, the collision of membranes, etc.

All that is neither here nor there. The point is that if something cannot come from nothing, it seems natural to posit that there has always been something.

But I don’t posit that there was always something. If there is something, it must have started, and if it did, it did so from nothing – which is impossible.

So back to the drawing board……

A personal look at nothing. Or what has nothing done for me?

Ronald Green — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 18:55:53 +0000

“Did your research into ‘nothing’ make any difference to you personally? Did it affect you and the way you think?”

That was one of the questions at the end of my talk in Westminster Library, and it stopped me in my tracks. Unlike all the other questions, not only was this personal but it was, strangely, one I hadn’t even thought about beforehand.

The fact is that my long look into “nothing” did change me. It would have been strange if it hadn’t; after all, the main contention of my book was that thinking about the world through “nothing” changes the way we look at things. And I had been thinking about nothing for five years!

I don’t know what first made me think about “nothing” seriously. I do know, though, that the urge was in me to look at life in a different way, from a different angle. If most of the universe consists of space – non-matter -wouldn’t it, surely, be a good idea to look at it from that perspective, rather than from matter? Looking at something from nothing, rather than the other way round. Perhaps, in fact, nothing matters.

I am neither a cosmologist nor an expert on quantum mechanics. But my delving into the possibility of something coming from nothing got me looking at the explanations posited for such a thing to occur and increased my already natural scepticism. A universe from nothing? Big Bang theory? Very nice, but “almost nothing” is not nothing, however close to nothing it is.

And so it is that I look askance at the way real physicists and cosmologists treat genuine problems by brushing them away. Take Lawrence Krauss, who desperately wants to explain how a universe could come from nothing. I don’t blame him for needing to confront the embarrassment of the Big Bang theory, described by John Wheeler, the scientist who coined the term ‘Black Hole’, as “the greatest crisis in physics”. How does Krauss do so? By simply saying that nothing isn’t really nothing. And for good measure he is angry that philosophers insist that nothing is not the way he would like it to be.

Did it make me more sceptical? It certainly did, even though the not-insignificant level of scepticism I already had helped me to look at things from the outside, as it were.

Apart from the knowledge I acquired about so much – and it really is amazing how many things are connected to “nothing” in some way – I feel I have changed in some fundamental way. For a start, I understand not only that there are different ways to tackle problems, but that I am capable of looking at them at an angle that would have been impossible for me in the past.

At the most practical level, I have changed fundamentally when it comes to art. If until recently I dismissed conceptual art because “I don’t understand it” and thus not worth bothering about, I have dramatically changed my views. Instead of treating art as if it needs to be purely of the heart, viz. that one is supposed to be affected emotionally, I now understand that art does not have to be “beautiful” in order to satisfy. Feelings are important, but so are thoughts. In other words, art can, and should, affect the mind, not only the heart.

I have heard often the notion that the function of art is to communicate the artist’s ideas or message. It is easy to admire a painting of nature or of a person. But how does an artist communicate an abstract idea? For us to understand that idea, we need to do more than use our eyes.

Artists strive to get their ideas across, as do writers and musicians. Not all is easy to understand without some effort. Is it worth the effort? I believe it is.

So what has nothing done for me? Not everything, but a lot.

Is it possible to think of nothing?

Ronald Green — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:53:38 +0000

One of the points I have the most difficulty getting across in my talks is that it is impossible to think of nothing. For some reason, resistance to accepting this is strong. What do I say to those who insist that not only is it possible to think of nothing, but that they can and have done so?

The question, of course, is whether it is at all possible not to think – to not think, in fact. It is claimed that that occurs in Meditation. But do people in Meditation reach a stage of not thinking? Do monks who spend years in caves reach that stage?

In order to qualify for a situation that is non-thinking, one would, presumably, be in a state of non-awareness. But would someone who is in that state be able to claim that he is not thinking? Obviously not, since he would be aware (and thinking) in order to make the claim.

So what do people mean when they say that they have been in a state of non-thinking? Presumably they remember not thinking. But how does one remember a state of non awareness, a period of not thinking?

Well, one thing that people mention as being a state of non-thinking is dreamless sleep. They remember looking at the clock, and when they next looked a couple of hours had passed; that, they say, was a state of oblivion, i.e. not thinking.

Without going into questions as to whether there had been dreams now not remembered, I can accept that the person was unaware through the period of being asleep. There are, though, a number of different points that need to be made regarding the state of oblivion. For a start, it is not a state of thinking about nothing, since oblivion, by its very nature, is not thinking at all. Besides, the very act of thinking is a conscious act that cannot at the same time be a non-conscious state.

But let’s get back to the main point: the contention by people that they do remember being in a state of oblivion. This cannot be so: What they do remember is the time before their dreamless sleep and the time after it. They do not remember what it was like to actually be in the state of oblivion.

Why is this important? Because the point that they are making is that it is possible to imagine a state of Nothing (the absence of everything). This is their response to my point that we cannot imagine what it is for us to not exist. Yes, we can imagine a world without us – but only by us “seeing” the world in which we aren’t present, as if watching a film of a situation without us. But it would still be us watching that film. What we cannot do is to imagine not imagining.

So how does this connect to our being in a state of oblivion when we are in a dreamless sleep?

As already pointed out, we are not aware of being in a state of oblivion. What we are aware of is before and after. What we “see” is afterwards: our being asleep, but not the state we were in while we were sleeping.

All this contributes to the differentiation I make between Nothing (the absence of everything) and nothingness (the absence of something).

Dreamless sleep/oblivion is not an example of Nothing. It is, rather, nothingness; it is the absence of consciousness. And why is it not Nothing? After all, we cannot be aware within a state of unconsciousness, so why is that not equivalent to Nothing at that time?

One of the reasons – actually, the most fundamental – is that we are around to discuss it before and, more importantly, afterwards. And what is the “it” that we are discussing? The absence of consciousness, not the absence of everything. The fact that we wake from a dreamless sleep makes it something. If we didn’t awake, we would not be around to discuss anything, and certainly not Nothing.

And last, but I think certainly not least, is the fact that Nothing cannot produce anything. There isn’t anything that can come after Nothing, in other words. Shakespeare said that nothing comes from nothing. Well… Even that is placing an emphasis where there is no room for one. There isn’t anything that comes from Nothing; even nothing doesn’t come from Nothing!

So every time we wake up, we do so not from Nothing. The alternative is not worth thinking about.

Is “nothing” something?

Ronald Green — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 10:09:58 +0000

In my recent round of talks about “nothing” in the UK and Ireland, the best part, invariably lively, was the Q & A session after each. It was when I could clarify – or attempt to clarify – points that I had mentioned in the talk, or ideas that people had thought of while I was talking. And often questions clarified points for me, or caused me to look afresh at a problem.

One of the most common questions was: “If you/we are talking about “nothing”, then surely it is something.”

It’s a good question. In fact, it is two questions, since it refers to different problems, that of “nothing” and the limitation of language.

My main hypothesis – which I build up and support in my book and, necessarily, more briefly in my talks – is that there is a difference between nothingness (the absence of something) and Nothing (the absence of everything). Once we make that distinction, we are able to tackle the something/nothing dichotomy. In fact, once the differentiation between nothingness and Nothing is understood, it is clear that nothingness is something; we can feel the absence of, for example, a person that we are used to seeeing in a certain place. Nothingness is “it” or “a” or “he”, “she” or any pronoun: nothingness is a thing, the presence of an absence.

The problem is with Nothing (the absence of everything). Is Nothing something because we are talking about it? No. While it is true that I cannot talk about something that cannot exist when I am around (since when I exist there isn’t the absence of everything – I am, after all, something), I can talk about the WORD Nothing. In fact, I have no other way to refer to it, other than through language.

The fact that I can talk about the word Nothing, does not mean that I have created what cannot be created. I do not agree with Wittgenstein’s dictum: “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” In the case of Nothing, the fact that we we cannot speak of it, is an extra proof that it cannot exist where we do. Nothing is where we are not – and that includes language that refers to it (and language cannot refer to it, of course).

The solution is not, of course, to not talk about Nothing. To be silent about Nothing would not bring us any closer to understanding what is not. It would simply put up a barrier of silence. But there is a barrier of language, you say. Yes, there is. But the barrier of language helps us understand the problem of getting to Nothing; in that, the barrier has a function.

It doesn’t matter how much we talk about it, Nothing is not something and will not become something. Let’s face it: we should not use “it” or “is” with Nothing. Nothing is not “it”, and Nothing “is” not.

Should we then be silent, as Wittgenstein would say? No. For being silent stops us from glimpsing that we are at the edge of human thought. Being silent does not allow us to see our own limitations. To be limited is part of what we are: to be human.

People are everything, even for “nothing”

Ronald Green — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 16:20:58 +0000

Finally home after three weeks of talking about “nothing” in England and Ireland, I can now reflect on my experiences.

I would have liked to write a live blog, as was my intention; but all good intentions aside, it was impossible to even begin. What with each day filled with the train or the car to get to where I was going to present, and the fact that my talks were all – apart from one Sunday – in the evening, not much time was left for thinking, never mind tapping anything coherent into my laptop.

Actually, after a few days it all became a blur. And it is only now, after a few days, that the events separate themselves in my mind and lie within my memory as individual rooms, halls, pubs, not to mention the one castle (Cork, Ireland).

It is not, though, the localities that leave the greatest impression upon me. What remains is the people and their questions.

Whether nothing is something, I can say definitely that people are everything. For me, the best places were where I met the nicest people, those who made me feel at home, with whom I could have a laugh and who I would like to meet again and feel I can call “friends.”

The events themselves were all interesting, with none being the same as another. Again it was the people who made the difference, with each event having a different type of audience, containing combinations of philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, biologists, whether professionally involved or simply interested.

The majority of each audience, though, consisted of people who simply were interested in listening to something – in this case nothing – that piqued their curiosity. And it was this that I found the most gratifying; that people come out on a cold night to listen and then discuss what can be summed up within the catch-all question “what it’s all about?” My talks were, after all, not “practical”, or “how to.”

And so it was the Q & A session after the talks that fired everyone up – including myself. It was then that I got as much out of the evening as did my audience, and it was then that I learnt more about my own subject.

It goes without saying that many of the questions were not new to me, and that most of them I had heard previously, albeit in different forms depending upon the personality of the questioner. Yet every now and again, there were questions that threw me, and that I had to think hard about. It was those questions that I loved. (Can one love a question that makes one work and have the answer “I don’t know?”)

So why did I love those questions. For a start, it showed that the person had really thought about what I was saying. For me, though, it was the thrill I got at the opportunity to expand my own knowledge of my subject. Was I surprised? I suppose yes, since I thought I had heard it all and that nothing new could be thrown at me. But really I shouldn’t have been, since there are are no boundaries to knowledge, and obviously I could not have covered everything there is to know about “nothing.” In fact, since completing my book, I have added much to the subject – enough for a sequel (“Nothing More”?)

How strange: this blog was supposed to contain a couple of the questions I received, and it was my intention to answer them. But I was side-tracked by the thought of people and how important they are to me and to philosophy in general. For what is philosophy if not for people?

Like the proverbial tree in the forest, without anyone around, there would be no philosophy.

As for the questions themselves, I will deal with them in future blogs – if I don’t get distracted again.

Thinking out of the box

Ronald Green — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:09:54 +0000

We hear it all the time, and it’s always complimentary. When someone thinks out of the box, he/she is supposedly thinking differently, in a way that is unrestricted by previously conceived ideas.

Yes, but…

Is it really possible to think out of the box? What box, in fact? If the expression refers to the box that is our individual head/mind, then it’s not such a big deal. After all, we are supposed to get ideas from others and so enhance our own way of thinking. But that’s not “the box” referred to in the expression.

The box is our mind. Nobody can think out of the box. Nobody ever has. Anything that we can think of is what already is. Everything that has ever been invented is based on something that came before. Isaac Newton, as great a thinker and scientist that he was, understood that what he discovered was based on what others before him had worked on. With frankness and humility he said: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”.

It is sad but true: our boxes are limited. We can make combinations of what is inside, but thinking of something absolutely and uniquely new is impossible. We can imagine unicorns, for example, even if they don’t exist as actual live creatures in nature; imagining a horse with a horn will give us a picture of a unicorn in our minds. We can even understand the notion of the bending of space and time, even though we can’t grasp the concept itself; we know what it means when something is bent and accept physicists’ explanation of the phenomenon occurring within our universe.

We cannot, though, imagine what is ungraspable. However innovative sci-fi movies are, they can never come up with aliens different from what we can imagine; little green men or slimy blobs with three heads, or whatever, are just combinations of what we know.

So are we stuck? Will we never really be able to think out of the box? Possibly. But it shouldn’t matter, since even if we accept it, we can also see how much we have advanced through the ages and how many more innovations come into being all the time.

It’s not a matter of thinking outside the box, but of the wonder of the box we do have. The fact that it is infinitely flexible within its own limitations is itself a wonder. And the fact that its innovative capability is due to, and dependent on, its links with other boxes that constitute humanity, allows us to understand that we, as individuals, are not alone and are not meant to be alone.

What we do best is to think within the box, as part of the matrix of boxes that is humankind.

The me, me, me generation

Ronald Green — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:19:56 +0000

How strange it is that even as science moves humans away from the centre around which everything revolves, modern society pushes itself in the opposite direction.

For some 1400 years, it was an accepted fact that the earth was at the centre of the universe and all celestial bodies, including the sun and the fixed stars, revolved around it. Ptolemy’s idea of a well-ordered universe, the earth at its centre, surrounded by the sun and planets – that made sense. But when Copernicus came along in 1543 and placed the sun at the centre, with the earth and the other planets moving around it, he did more than just describe how the universe is physically; he brought about a complete shift in man’s philosophical conception of the universe and his place within it.

With the advance of science, changes in the focus of philosophical thought and particularly the radical idea of evolution, humans seemed to have become reconciled with their place within nature. Or should have.

Why, then, are we the me, me, me generation, where all is geared towards the individual, where self-aggrandizing is the aim in life within common perception? After all, isn’t it the be-all and end-all of vast numbers of youth to emulate the stars of movies and sport, the celebrities of seemingly super-human attributes?

It would be nice – and is much in fashion - to blame it all on capitalism, which has in its inner core the ideology of individual achievement. But communism hasn’t shown us anything different. We need only look at the self-serving elite in the now-defunct Soviet Union, with their dachas and special privileges to understand that not everyone was meant to be equal, or the supposedly egalitarian N. Korea, whose late Dear Leader enjoyed a lavish life style with fine wines and food while his subjects were starving.

We can’t, surely, blame the media for their massive and obsessive coverage of the famous and the beautiful. The media cover what people want to see and read about. And with the world ever more exposable and open, ever more people prefer to be like the celebrities they see within a widening and self perpetuating circle of sameness.

Is there any reason – can anything be blamed – for this obsession with the self, even while science is showing humans’ place in nature, almost irrelevant in the scheme of a universe that is ungraspably large?

Instant gratification is the name of the game nowadays, even with – perhaps, especially with – those who are not hooked on TV reality shows and the lives of celebrities.

NOW is the new alchemy of life. During a period when instant gratification is shown as the aim of life and posited as “what it’s all about”, the idea that eternity can be achieved effortlessly is much more attractive than the lifelong dedication that has to be invested within traditional (Western) religions, their codes and strictures.

New Age concentrates on living, and living is NOW. There is no past, there is no future, all is in the NOW. Achievable with the minimum of effort – unless meditation is considered effort, which it is not supposed to be – NOW is the undefined theme of New Age wisdom as part of happiness, contentment, well-being and satisfaction that lead to the cycle of eternity.

New Age strikes a chord. Sometimes it uses pop versions of Eastern faiths, as does American spiritual teacher Baba Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert), who has been bringing Buddhism to the masses, helped by his 1971 bestseller Remember, Be Here Now. It’s all about “positive thinking”, advocated by Eckhart Tolle, plus New Thought ideas such as “The Secret”, which claims that the mind is so powerful that one can achieve anything.

NOW is the name of the game and the game is ME. It is what *I* can do NOW. It is *I* who will achieve what I want.

It is perhaps no wonder that New Age came along when it did. While science brings progress, and cosmology does its bit to show how insignificant we are in the universe, human enlightened nature insists that it is WE who count and that NOW is when it counts.

As a philosophy of life, NOW is convenient and comfortable. It allows one to be free of responsibility not only for the past, but for actions that could affect the future. And since NOW can only apply to what *I* do and feel, it sums up perfectly an age in which it is not important what *I* can do for the world, but what that world can do for *me*.

Strange, though, even if predictable, that at a time when science has done so much to add to our understanding of the world, it is the ME generation that holds sway and attracts ever more adherents. Science and enlightenment have parted company.

Nothing to think about

Ronald Green — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 14:05:25 +0000

In the Virtual Muser, a very lively forum on Facebook, I was addressed by Deborah Greene Bershatsky, an active and highly articulate member, who posted: ”My thoughts after reading your book are that we know nothing about nothing because there is nothing to know.”

The remark stopped me in my tracks. I am not usually stumped for an immediate answer to any questions about “nothing”. After all, I have been actively thinking about nothing for five years and am constantly on the receiving end of dozens of questions in my talks and book tours. After a while, though, I realised how incisive the remark was – so much so that I intend to make use of it in my forthcoming talks next month.

Deborah is right, of course. There is nothing to know, since Nothing is the absence of everything, including ourselves and our thoughts. If we could know anything about Nothing, there would be something to know. Nothing, though, is not something.

Now while there is nothing to know about Nothing (the absence of everything), it is for that very reason that there is plenty to know about Nothingness (the absence of something). We can feel an absence and we know what it replaces. When there is an absence of someone we were expecting, we can talk about that absent person. As Elvis, referring to his own absence, sang in Are You Lonesome Tonight: “Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare – Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?” Absences are real. Both Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter use silences in their plays to devastating effect, the absences being as powerful as the words that surround them.

So if Nothingness is real, is also Nothing real? My only answer as to whether Nothing is real is that I don’t know. I can’t know about Nothing. There is, as Deborah say, nothing to know.

Having said that, I need to add that my saying “I don’t know” in no way implies that there may or may not be Nothing. With Nothing, it is not a matter of doubt, unlike the implication of saying that one does not know whether God exists. Either God exists or he doesn’t; the whole point in belief in God is that he exists. However, with the concept of Nothing, the whole point is that it is the absence of everything, and as such, it cannot be thought of as “existing”.

Well, that was a rather heavy start to the year. I actually intended this blog entry to be more festive. I was thinking about where 2011 went and whether we can call it an absence. Another time.

Don’t mind me

Ronald Green — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 17:11:48 +0000

I am trying to understand why doing nothing is considered by some to be better than doing something. That is, after all, the message spread by Eastern faith/philosophy. It’s not just the message, but the way it is passed on to the rest of us, who, it’s alluded, are not as enlightened as we should be. It is the smugness of inherently perceived superiority that annoys me as much as the argument itself.

The message that Eastern philosophy is somehow superior to western philosophy is rather strange – no, very strange. What is it that we are told, after all? That a still mind is better than an active mind. That by ridding our minds of extraneous matter, i.e. the outside world, we will get to an inner peace, to “the truth”.

How so? What truth do we actually get to when our minds are blank? What superior level do we reach when we meditate, saying the same mantra over and over for hours? Robert Pirsig, the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, in an interview about meditation, stated that “If you stare at a wall from four in the mornng till nine at night and you do that for a week, you are getting pretty close to nothingness.” Is this a recommendation?

Mankind has come a long way along the evolutionary path, with countless inventions and discoveries, none of which were the result of a mind deep into nothingness. From earliest times, advances have been the result of thinking, not of non-thinking. Philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, physicians, economists, industrialists, accountants, whatever, all advanced in their field, and so advanced mankind, by making their brains work.

Yet now we have the fashionable New Agers, influenced by Buddhism, Tao and a slew of Eastern thought, all of whom refer to the superiority of anything rather than reason and logical thought. We are somehow led to believe that intuition is superior to logical thinking, that intuition is on a higher level than the dirty business of working out a problem by thinking about it. It is a sort of anti-intellectualism, wrapped in an enigma that is not supposed to be challenged.

There is nothing wrong with belief. Why should one argue with belief? There is no need because belief does not lean upon logic, and neither does it have to. Belief is belief. And here is my frustration with Eastern thought: it does not admit to being a belief. It will simply make the point that the mind isn’t everything and that, in fact, intuition is on a higher level. No argument works at this point, since argument itself is what is considered to be useless. And so we are in a vicious circle, with the circle being an integral part of eastern idea of no beginning and no end. See? We can’t win.

I suppose one argument could be that the world is in the bad state it is because of reason, and that wars take place because of leaders using their minds for evil. Yes, that is true. In the meantime, I would like to be given some examples of where non-thinking advanced the world in any way, and where the world would be now if everyone would have emptied their minds.

Just a thought…

Beginnings and endings

Ronald Green — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:48:43 +0000

Looking out of the window a few minutes ago – I’m not doing it at this moment, typing this – a banal thought hit me: everything that I am looking at began at some time and will end at some time.

[I just paused to look out again...]

It’s a lovely day, actually. I see a couple of trees, a blue sky with whisps of cloud, while close by is my neighbour’s house. I can’t hear anything, apart from the hum of my computer and the sound of my fingers tapping the keyboard. And now that I am thinking about what I am hearing, there is also some sort of nondescript sound in my ears. I’m reminded of John Cage’s description of visiting the anechoic chamber (a completely sound proof room) at Harvard in 1951 and being amazed by sounds that were coming from within himself. (I describe that on p. 91 in my book).

But I digress…

Everything I see and hear, everything I am thinking of, all had a beginning and all will end. Depressing, really…

I’m wondering, though, whether that is true for everything. It must be, for there is nothing I can think of that does not have beginnings and endings. [Unless, of course, one believes in God, who is eternal, with no beginning and no end; but we'll leave that out and file it under "beliefs".]

Strangely, we have greater chances nowadays of having things last long after we as individuals are gone. All our online meanderings are up there for future generations to look at. This blog will float around the virtual netherland for… who knows? But let’s face it, even our virtual writings will last only as long as there is something to house them. But even the world will end, and when that happens, it will all end – even these words of wisdom.

So is there really nothing that does not have a beginning and an end? You guessed it. My favourite subject: Nothing.

I wrote above that “…there is nothing I can think of that does not have beginnings and endings.” Looking at that sentence the way I do and seeing it as ambiguous, I agree with its other meaning: that “nothing” does not have a beginning and an ending.

How could Nothing begin? From what would it begin? Can something turn into Nothing (the absence of everything)?

How could Nothing end? Would Nothing turn into something? Surely nothing comes from nothing. Not even that, actually.

For Nothing to begin or end, it would have to be somethimg, not nothing.

So is Nothing the only thing that doesn’t begin or end? ooops, I mentioned “thing”. Nothing is no-thing, right?

Now why did I start this blog entry? All I did was to stare out of the window for a minute. But it was enough to remind me that with all the things I saw, there was still the unfathomable Nothing, lurking (or not lurking) beyond our understanding, showing us our own limitations.