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I was curious about the meaning of ‘nothing’ and so looked it up in a couple of online resources.
The best definition I found was in Wikipedia which says that ‘nothing’ is ‘a concept that describes the absence of anything’. Other dictionaries define it as ‘something that has no existence.’
I’m certainly no philosopher, but don’t the words ‘anything’ or ‘something’ used in these definitions raise yet more questions? For example, if the absence of ‘anything’ is right, then what is the effect of its absence? And if ‘something’ that has no existence is right, then what is the ‘something’ referred to?
Wikipedia confirms my train of thought by the following: ‘Grammatically, the word ‘nothing’ is an indefinite pronoun, which means that it refers to something. One might argue that ‘nothing’ is a concept, and since concepts are things, the concept of ‘nothing’ itself is a thing.’
As I looked closer into the subject of ‘nothingness’, I found that the philosophers have tortured themselves with it since ancient times. The list of them is impressive, starting with Parmenides in the 5th-century BC right up to modern folk such as Newton and Einstein. I have to say though that reading through some of their thoughts on the issue is akin to swimming in thick mud. But then my brain isn’t as good as theirs.
Why am I banging on about the concept of nothingness? It’s simply because I can find nothing of any interest, at least to me, to talk about today.
But I’ll bet you guessed that already!
.
I was curious about the meaning of ‘nothing’ and so looked it up in a couple of online resources.
The best definition I found was in Wikipedia which says that ‘nothing’ is ‘a concept that describes the absence of anything’. Other dictionaries define it as ‘something that has no existence.’
I’m certainly no philosopher, but don’t the words ‘anything’ or ‘something’ used in these definitions raise yet more questions? For example, if the absence of ‘anything’ is right, then what is the effect of its absence? And if ‘something’ that has no existence is right, then what is the ‘something’ referred to?
Wikipedia confirms my train of thought by the following: ‘Grammatically, the word ‘nothing’ is an indefinite pronoun, which means that it refers to something. One might argue that ‘nothing’ is a concept, and since concepts are things, the concept of ‘nothing’ itself is a thing.’
As I looked closer into the subject of ‘nothingness’, I found that the philosophers have tortured themselves with it since ancient times. The list of them is impressive, starting with Parmenides in the 5th-century BC right up to modern folk such as Newton and Einstein. I have to say though that reading through some of their thoughts on the issue is akin to swimming in thick mud. But then my brain isn’t as good as theirs.
Why am I banging on about the concept of nothingness? It’s simply because I can find nothing of any interest, at least to me, to talk about today.
But I’ll bet you guessed that already!
.
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