Sandelin 1
Zachary Sandelin
Ms. Petersen
English II, Period E
11 March 2014
What is “Nothing”?
What is nothing? A bold question, indeed. How does one define something which does not exist? One could look towards the optimistic side and provide a description such as “Oh, nothing is the absence of matter, a space of the universe waiting for matter to fill it.” Or, one could also look at the pessimistic side of the question, and provide an answer such as “Gosh Mom, Nothing is what I feel when I listen to my punk-rock boy bands and write in my journal.” This paper plans on exploring the physical side of nothing, the philosophical section of nothing, and the weird “long-lost-cousin-that-nobody-really-talks-about-anymore” side of the nothing family, A.K.A. “Quantum Mechanics”. The resources used to collect information include the scary and “Please have parent's permission before logging on” jungle namely known as the “Internet”. But the use of electronic means of collecting information were not the only resources used, also included were =long-lost relics, named “books” according to my English teacher. But in all seriousness, also included some ancient scrolls, mainly based on Aristotle and Parmendias' philosophies regarding “nothing”. Not emotionally however, but legitimately about the complete lack of matter in any given area. Hopefully my wise-ass jokes haven't scared you off yet, let's start shall we?
I'll start of by speaking of the philosophical side of nothing. When I say “nothing” what does your imagination compute? Do you envision an empty white room? Do you picture nothing but blackness? …. Go ahead, I'll give you a minute. Well looks like times up, now I want you to take your idea of what nothing...
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...etical branch off of the Big Bang states that the universe is in a constant cycle of imploding and exploding. This borrows majorly from the unproven theory of “the Big Crunch” where the universe will eventually retract and implode on itself, which will then explode again. It is literally a never ending cycle of galactic trauma and violence. Our brains are unable to compute the size of such an event, which is why we hush away these uncomfortable feelings of the unknown, and sugar coat these events with tales of Gods and “larger-than-life” beings. These tales usually follow the simple pattern of a God creating everything out of nothing, which is extremely simple, and our brains are comfortable with computing a basic story. The Hindu belief of Vishna the Preserver creating the universe out of a lotus flower is a slightly more complex version of this storyline.
is absolutely nothing in the world, no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies." Then he goes on to say that
To live in a world without human connection, is to live an empty and meaningless life. Both Karen Armstrong, and Robert Thurman, highlight the necessity of human contact throughout their essays. In his text “Wisdom,” Robert Thurman shows us the path to discover the selflessness of what we believe is our true and actual self. He claims that no matter how hard one might try to find themselves, they will only find a rigid, fixated self. But when we finally accept our selflessness and turn away from our egos, we can become compassionate and experience the void, which he defines as a free and boundless self. Additionally, Karen Armstrong debates that the universe is driven by concepts such as “Being,” and “Brahman,” which both represent the ultimate
the vital force that creates all things and the cosmic intellegence that governs it from
Zero was strolling along the steep edge of the lake when a movement caught his eye. Something long and dark moved beneath the surface and stopped his own motion to get a better look. The dark object darted past just shy of breaking the surface, leaving a wake as it displaced the viscous fluid. With no data points to reference what he had seen, and no connection on which to source any he was lost as to what he was even viewing. With no more signs of movement he moved on not sure where he was going or if there was even an achievable goal. With that line of reasoning he stopped again, for all he knew, which wasn't much in his current state, time itself had destroyed all other living entities. The prospect of being alone in the universe dawned on Zero and he longed for an answer to these questions.
We are asked to countenance the possibility of the following situation: the nonexistence of anything followed by the existence of something. The words “followed by” are crucial — how are they to be interpreted? What they cannot mean is that there is at one time nothing and at a subsequent time something, because the nonexistence of anything is supposed toinclude time: to say that at one time there is nothing whatsoever is self-defeating because it is to say that there is a time at which nothing exists — hence something did exist. But it is hard to see how else we are supposed to understand “followed by”; or when the denier of the causal principle says that it is possible for something to come from nothing what are we to understand by “from”? Again it c...
Cosmological myths serve the purpose of explaining existence, particularly to less scientifically advanced cultures. These myths, or stories, were created as a way of dealing with the questions regarding the universe which could not be answered concretely. Cosmic myths include creation myths, flood myths, apocalyptic myths, and afterlife myths. Examples of all of these aspects of the cosmological life cycle are present in D.H. Lawrence’s “The Horse-Dealer’s Daughter”.
All of this exists as ideas of consciousness in the Absolute. Ultimately, matter can only be the Absolute in which nothing is independent of it. Bibliography J. Gribbin, In Search of Schrödinger's Cat (Corgi, 1984).
Just because we do not understand this immeasurable form of energy does not mean we should deny its existence. Most souls go on to something better, such as Heaven, or worse, Hell perhaps. But, some remain behind... Bibliography:.. Berlitz, Charles. A. A. World of strange phenomena.
Creation of the Universe It would be ignorant to believe that there is only one explanation for the creation of the universe. The Vedic hymns present several cosmogonies. There are many interpretations for these myths resulting from there documentation on various levels of culture. It is purposeless to quest for the origin of each of these cosmogonies because most of these ideas and beliefs represent a heritage transmitted from prehistory all over the ancient world. There are four essential types of cosmogonies that seem to have fascinated
There is nothing. You're staring at white. All white, nothing else to it. It's not even a different color. It's blank white. Maybe that's part of the reason we, as writers, have a hard time coming up with ideas. Our mind goes blank because we are staring at a blank screen, or a blank sheet of paper (however you choose to write). The image of nothing infiltrates our brains and since that is all we see, it's what's thought about most.
Lucretius. On the Nature of Things. Trans. Walter Englert. Newburyport, MA: Focus Philosophical Library, 2003.
Myths organize the way we perceive and understand our reality. Myths grant stability to a culture, and in this respect; serve to explain the unexplainable. From Barbra Sproul’s perspective, creation myths reveal basic religious concerns pertaining to how the universe was formed, and how people or societies are fashioned. Myths speak of the transcendent and unknowable aspects in a drama that attempt to reveal and give reason to human existence and where man stands in the cosmos. Through myth, the dimensions of space, nature and time are expressed in symbolisms that show how the holy can be experienced or conveyed if understood properly.
Rosenblum, Bruce, and Fred Kuttner. "Chapter 4: Our Newtonian Worldview." Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. 23-37. Print.
Genesis 1:1-2 says: “First this: God created the Heavens and Earth—all you see, all you don’t see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God’s Spirit brooded like a bird over the watery abyss.” The Message. There is a long-standing debate over whether the universe sprang into existence as "singularity", or God created it. Singularities are, in the simplest of terms, black holes.
ABSTRACT: The universe as a whole can be shown to consist of two worlds: the real world and the transcendental world. The real world is a multitude of passing things in a gravitational field: it is the world of nature, every unit of which is born (from the transcendental world), develops, degrades and dies (that is, it returns to the transcendental world). The transcendental world is the world of the integrated, nonpassing, unborn and undying, internally functioning Unity, which is the other side of the real world (so to speak) as roots to a tree and its branches in relation to the surface of the Earth. The fundamental science of the real world is theoretical physics. The transcendental world is also a 'physical' but energyless world. In this paper, I outline characteristics of the real world, and the basic characteristics of the transcendental world which are essential for constructing a theory about the functioning of the cosmological vacuum.