Yesterday
you saw Dr. M. who sent you to Bethesda North
Hospital for X-rays. Monday you have an appointment at nine o'clock with a Dr.
D. at Tri Health Orthopedic and Sport Institute in Kenwood for primary acute
bilateral low back pain with bilateral sciatica. Dr. M. said you would like Dr.
D. - Amorella
1134 hours. Dr. M. ordered a couple of meds to help relieve some of the
pain, one a cream and the other a steroid. The cream helped some last night but
I didn't begin with the steroid pack until this morning.
Last night you were investigating programs to help edit your novel;
first time you've shown any interest of late. - Amorella
2225 hours. I am out of
words.
You are out of thoughts. - Amorella
2227 hours. You are right.
What thought would you like if you could have one at this moment? -
Amorella
2228 hours. That's funny, Amorella.
How so? - Amorella
2229 hours. Because it was an unexpected question.
What thought would you like? - Amorella
2230 hours. I can't think of any. -- Nothing comes
to mind.
Let's look it up. - Amorella
2232 hours. Look up what?
Nothing. - Amorella
** **
Nothing
From Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia
Nothing is a concept denoting the absence of something, and is
associated with nothingness. In nontechnical uses, nothing denotes things lacking importance,
interest, value, relevance, or significance. Nothingness is the state of being nothing, the state of nonexistence of anything, or the property of
having nothing.
Philosophy
Western philosophy
Some would consider the study of "nothing" to be
foolish. A typical response of this type is voiced by Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798)
in conversation with his landlord, one Dr. Gozzi, who also happens to be a
priest:
"As
everything, for him, was an article of faith, nothing, to his mind, was
difficult to understand: the Great Flood had covered the entire world; before,
men had the misfortune of living a thousand years; God conversed with them;
Noah had taken one hundred years to build the ark; while the earth, suspended
in air, stood firmly at the center of the universe that God had created out of
nothingness. When I said to him, and proved to him, that the existence of
nothingness was absurd, he cut me short, calling me silly."
However, "nothingness" has been treated as a serious
subject for a very long time. In philosophy, to avoid linguistic traps over the
meaning of "nothing", a phrase such as not-being is often
employed to make clear what is being discussed.
Parmenides
One of the earliest western philosophers to consider nothing as
a concept was Parmenides (5th century BC), who was a Greek philosopher of the
monist school. He argued that "nothing" cannot exist by the following
line of reasoning: To speak of a thing, one has to speak of a thing that
exists. Since we can speak of a thing in the past, this thing must still exist
(in some sense) now, and from this he concludes that there is no such thing as
change. As a corollary, there can be no such things as coming-into-being,
passing-out-of-being, or not-being.
Parmenides was taken seriously by other philosophers,
influencing, for instance, Socrates and Plato. Aristotle gives Parmenides
serious consideration but concludes;
"Although these opinions seem to follow logically in a
dialectical discussion, yet to believe them seems next door to madness when one
considers the facts."
Leucippus
Leucippus (early 5th century BC), one of the atomists, along
with other philosophers of his time, made attempts to reconcile this monism
with the everyday observation of motion and change. He accepted the monist position
that there could be no motion without a void. The void is the opposite of
being. It is not-being. On the other hand, there exists something known
as an absolute plenum, a space filled with matter, and there can be no motion
in a plenum because it is completely full. But, there is not just one
monolithic plenum, for existence consists of a multiplicity of plenums. These
are the invisibly small "atoms" of Greek atomist theory, later
expanded by Democritus (circa 460 BC – 370 BC), which allows the void to
"exist" between them. In this scenario, macroscopic objects can come-into-being,
move through space, and pass into not-being by means of the coming
together and moving apart of their constituent atoms. The void must exist to
allow this to happen, or else the "frozen world" of Parmenides must
be accepted.
Bertrand Russell points out that this does not exactly defeat
the argument of Parmenides but, rather, ignores it by taking the rather modern
scientific position of starting with the observed data (motion, etc.) and
constructing a theory based on the data, as opposed to Parmenides' attempts to
work from pure logic. Russell also observes that both sides were mistaken in
believing that there can be no motion in a plenum, but arguably motion cannot start
in a plenum. Cyril Bailey notes that Leucippus is the first to say that a
"thing" (the void) might be real without being a body and points out
the irony that this comes from a materialistic atomist. Leucippus is therefore
the first to say that "nothing" has a reality attached to it.
Aristotle, Newton, Descartes
Aristotle (384–322 BC) provided the
classic escape from the logical problem posed by Parmenides by distinguishing
things that are matter and things that are space. In this
scenario, space is not "nothing" but, rather, a receptacle in which
objects of matter can be placed. The true void (as "nothing") is
different from "space" and is removed from consideration.
This characterisation of space reached its pinnacle with Isaac
Newton who asserted the existence of absolute space.
Rene Descartes, on the other hand, returned to a Parmenides-like
argument of denying the existence of space. For Descartes, there was matter, and
there was extension of matter leaving no room for the existence of
"nothing".
The idea that space can actually be empty was generally still
not accepted by philosophers who invoked arguments similar to the plenum
reasoning. Although Descartes views on this were challenged by Blaise Pascal, he
declined to overturn the traditional belief, horror vacui, commonly stated as "nature abhors a
vacuum". This remained so until celli Evangelista Torri invented the
barometer in 1643 and showed that an empty space appeared if the mercury tube
was turned upside down. This phenomenon being known as the Torricelli vacuum
and the unit of vacuum pressure, the torr, being named after him. Even
Torricelli's teacher, the famous Galileo Galilei had previously been unable to
adequately explain the sucking action of a pump.
John the Scot
John the Scot, or Johannes Scotus Eriugena (c. 815–877) held
many surprisingly heretical beliefs for the time he lived in for which no
action appears ever to have been taken against him. His ideas mostly stem from,
or are based on his work of translating pseudo-Dionysius. His beliefs are
essentially pantheist and he classifies evil, amongst many other things, into not-being.
This is done on the grounds that evil is the opposite of good, a quality of
God, but God can have no opposite, since God is everything in the pantheist
view of the world. Similarly, the idea that God created the world out of
"nothing" is to be interpreted as meaning that the
"nothing" here is synonymous with God.
G. W. F. Hegel
Georg Wilheim Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
is the philosopher who brought the dialectical method to a new pinnacle of
development. According to Hegel in Science
of Logic, the dialectical methods consists of three steps. First, a thesis
is given, which can be any proposition in logic. Second, the antithesis of the
thesis is formed and, finally, a synthesis incorporating both thesis and
antithesis. Hegel believed that no proposition taken by itself can be
completely true. Only the whole can be true, and the dialectical synthesis was
the means by which the whole could be examined in relation to a specific
proposition. Truth consists of the whole process. Separating out thesis,
antithesis, or synthesis as a stand-alone statement results in something that
is in some way or other untrue. The concept of "nothing" arises in
Hegel right at the beginning of his Logic. The whole is called by Hegel
the "Absolute" and is to be viewed as something spiritual. Hegel then
has:
•
Thesis: The Absolute is Pure Being
•
Antithesis: The Absolute
is Nothing
•
Synthesis: The Absolute is Becoming
•
Existentialists
The most prominent figure among the existentials is Jean-Paul
Sartre, whose ideas in his book Being and
Nothingness (L'être et le néant) are heavily influenced by Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) of
Martin Heidegger, although Heidegger later stated that he was misunderstood by
Sartre. Sartre defines two kinds of "being" (être). One kind is être-en-soi,
the brute existence of things such as a tree. The other kind is être-pour-soi
which is consciousness. Sartre claims that this second kind of being is
"nothing" since consciousness cannot be an object of consciousness
and can possess no essence. Sartre, and even more so, Jaques Lacan, use this
conception of nothing as the foundation of their atheist philosophy. Equating
nothingness with being leads to creation from nothing and hence God is no
longer needed for there to be existence.
Eastern philosophy
The understanding of 'nothing' varies widely between cultures,
especially between Western and Eastern cultures and philosophical traditions.
For instance, Śūnyatā
(emptiness), unlike "nothingness", is considered to be a state of
mine in some forms of Buddhism. Achieving 'nothing' as a state of mind in this
tradition allows one to be totally focused on a thought or activity at a level
of intensity that they would not be able to achieve if they were consciously thinking.
A classic example of this is an archer attempting to erase the mind and clear
the thoughts to better focus on the shot. Some authors have pointed to
similarities between the Buddhist conception of nothingness and the idea
although this connection has not been explicitly made by the philosophers
themselves.
In some Eastern philosophies, the concept of
"nothingness" is characterized by an egoless state of being in which
one fully realizes one's own small part in the cosmos.
The Kyoto School handles the concept of nothingness as well.
Selected and edited from Wikipedia
** **
2300 hours. I like the idea of nothingness "being
characterized by an egoless state in which one fully realizes one's own small
part in the cosmos". I like the idea but in the moment's context when
"Nothing came to mind," the egoless state did not come with it. Nothing was
there, i.e. in my head.
Isn't that 'egolessness'? - Amorella
2304 hours. No, it figuratively means 'empty-headed' (which is not so
funny,) 'empty-headed' is a state of being. Now, of course, since I grew interested in
the article and it had mention of several people I have read about (and some of
their books), particularly those of Hegel, Sartre and Heidegger, my mind was refilled
with their ideas and my mental state of being became less empty.
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