How can the term ‘nothing’ exist, when in reality there’s always some thing there?

Question

just my curiosity working up again.... ^__^

Answer 1

Great question!!

Nothing is a concept derived from something. If there is something and that is removed, what remains is nothing. However, we are so tuned to and limited by space that we can not visualize absolute nothing..... what we think of as nothing is in fact empty space which is something and not nothing.... nothing should mean that even space is not there and such a concept is not possible for us to truly visualize. Anything and everything can be destroyed, but nothing can neither be created nor destroyed.... in that sense it has no definite existence... however, it is eternal or perennial in the sense that it is the ultimate remnant when everything is removed or destroyed. If one does not believe in God, one has no option but to assume that everything has come out of nothing and finally can only disappear into nothing. In that sense nothingness is the atheist's God.
It is really mind-boggling.

Answer 2

Yes, this is a question I asked too. I didn't get any good answers though! Even the absence of air in an enclosed container is a vaccuum, which is of course a powerful force.
"How did the universe come into being out of nothing" people sometimes ask. I think the inability of humans to explain that is more a function of how our brains work. The limited scope of the human brain for all it's vaunted "intelligence". We just haven't evolved to a high enough degree yet to be able to see the answer to this question (and many others!) and maybe the human race won't survive long enough to evolve that far as we are destroying our home, the earth, faster every day.
Keep on asking those interesting questions though. Keeps our brains exercised!

Answer 3

Until Arabs mathematicians invented the number "zero", Western European scholars up to the Renaissance had no concept of nothing. "Nothing" radically revolutionised how we were able to manipulate ideas and compare sets of data or information - mathematically, scientifically and philosophically. Of course the concept gives rise to endless circular arguments and dissertations on how the absence of something can be something, but it shows just how counter-intuitive and mind-stretching the idea was. Since the mid-twentieth century, "nothingness" has been philosophically associated with existentialism (Sartre, Camus) and the concept of the absurdity of the contradiction between how we see ourselves from within (meaningful, purposeful lives) and how we look from the outside (miniscule, short-lived, pointless). And yet again, the Eastern tradition uses the concept of nothing as a lynch-pin in thinking about ideal states of mind in which all desire, longing, pain and striving are absent and oneness with all leads to inner peace. It's a far-reaching and powerful thought-tool, this idea of nothing.

Answer 4

The term nothing can exist for various reasons, one being that whoever made the word wasn't thinking clearly enough to actually realize nothing should not be nothing becaus there's always something.

The term nothing could also be a term that refers to everything. The idea of everything just being too vast that it reverts to a simpler term to represent inactivity and emptiness. Everything is nothing and nothing is everything. Nothingness is each and every individual being/object that managed to survive in the world.

Answer 5

a guy or woman including your self is upset and living on your guy or woman little international. the way any good minded Socialist or Marxist could take over any u . s . a . is misinform the persons and declare he's basically so good and everybody is evil, then ingredient the finger on the rich human beings like Stalin did in Russia or Castro did in Cuba. Then while they arrive to capability those each and every person is printed as liars. it particularly is how they arrive into capability with the help of lien. What you basically defined as administration with the aid of capital wealth is defenitly is what OBama is attempting to do ?.

Answer 6

Nothing is only a symbol for the presence of something that can not be experienced by our senses or knowledge. The 'reality' of what we are cannot be touched by the tools of knowledge that we posses so we create several different mystical ideologies in an attempt to define and capture it. So, it can be said that what we are is nothing and what we see is only the symbol or shadow of that nothing.

Answer 7

Its all about perception.........because when you're expecting somthing specific to exist in a certain place, & it's not there, then you prceive it to be nothing there. Like an empty glass.... If you're expecting it to be filled with Juice/water, so you say there's nothing in the glass, but the reality is that air exists in the glass. Which is indeed somthing.

Answer 8

You are right -- we have no experience of an absolute "nothingness." We only postulate it, semantically, as opposed to "something." So in actuality, "nothingness" is not a very weighty concept to us. It is based on semantic opposites. In other words, the term only exists because of logic -- the idea of A and not A. Our idea of "nothing" only boils down to, "Not Something."

Answer 9

"Nothingness" is an abstract term used to describe the idea of the absence of any thing. How do you know that there is ALWAYS something? And where is "there?"
What is space but nothing - it's not air!?

Answer 10

As already noted, nothing refers to one's limited perspective.

If I open a toy chest, which by default ought to contain my children's toy's, and I find not one toy inside, not one visible object, it's appropriate to report to my wife that, indeed, there's nothing inside the toy chest.

Our linguistic perspective has been constrained by size in this instance. I doubt she would respond that, in fact, there are millions of air molecules, dust mites, strands of hair and other incidental objects inside, but no toys. Linguistically, nothing refers to what one EXPECTS to find inside a toy chest...limited by perspective.

This is an appropriate use of language. When I say that there's nothing in my hand, I mean that I am holding nothing inside. Of course, that's never technically true, but within normal linguistic context, it's perfectly understood. And thank goodness, that kind of excrutiating precision would force an unacceptable level of conversation!