Big Bang happened everywhere, not any specific point. Relativity states that there are no "special" places in the universe. No place which everything is relative to. Particles doesn't exist in any particular place and doesn't behave in any particular way (just has a probability of behaving in a certain way). Everything seems to be relative to everything else, in the big picture I think that they cancel eachother, forming a complete balance, in which nothing really exists and everything is just a illusion. So what is nothing? Science tells us that particles borrow energy from nothing, then exists for a while and then disappear returning the energy. I think relativity is in a way fooling nothing to think that everything doesn't exist by performing a perfect balance, so that it can exist without returning it's energy that once was borrowed. "So for a little time energy can be created and destroyed, as long as it happens within the allowed uncertainty in the measurements. Another way to look at it is that the photon is allowed to borrow energy from the empty space..." (taken out of context without changing the meaning) Stuff and Glue (note that they are serious despite of it's weird name) Have to show you this also: From the same site: "(The really cool part of this is, of course, that the photon has to know how far it's to be going before it leaves! If the electron which it's going to visit is too far away, then it can't carry much energy; if it's close, then it can carry lots of energy. But how does it know how far away the electron is and how much energy it can carry even before it goes there? Hmmmm.)" To carry on: Nothing is only how we perceive it, "nothing" doesn't exist, but whatever we call nothing isn't the nothing that I'm talking about, in my view nothing is a world hidden from us, or a thin layer that seperates us from what *really* exists. The universe is as such only a illusion, a illusion that exists by itself. It can also be that there is some kind of logical argument that actually allows something to exist without something to exist in. The concept of "borrowing energy" may be such a argument. Maybe at the "other side of nothing" there are alot of "somethings" that are trying to get through the thin layer that seperates us, and that it succeeds by getting through unnoticed and then forming it's own logic <it's own world within the world> where it obeys it's own rules, creating it's own universe (it's own everything). Everything can never know nothing, it cannot perceive of nothing, therefor there has to be a slow fade between nothing and everything, you have noticed it also, if you think about it. You cannot see infinitly at the left and the right of your visual field, can you? But where does it stop? Are there any clear limits? It's a slow fade, so slow that you don't realize that nothing is just ahead, as long as the fade is bigger than the focus then it's allowed to exist, if you could get a glimpse of nothing then you relative to nothing would stop existing (at least stop existing in the universe). You see, we are forming our own world, just as the "somethings" beyond nothing. The mind is a universe of it's own.
Interesting post. I've wrestled a lot with these ideas myself and have not come to any definite conclusions. . . there is so much we don't know and can only speculate about at this point. It all seems so impossible at times.
Cyperium wrote: As I see it, "nothing" is an idea. It's conceptual limit. Whether nothingness exists or not (and I don't believe that it does) does not disallow our ability to conceive of it. The physicist, Shimion Malin, wrote: "Our powers of conceptualizing are greater than our powers of imaging. Most of our thinking is done, in fact, with concepts rather than with images. We think about beauty and equality; we think of happiness and love; we think about the number one-million all without images." You wrote: That's a pretty good definition of Idealism, Cyperium. I did want to mention that as the situation stands today, we're pretty much free to pick our own interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. My current favorite is John Cramer's Transactional Interpretation. http://www.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_rep/tiqm/TI_toc.html I particularly enjoyed his derivation beginning with Maxwell's beautiful equations. Of course, many, if not most of the various QM's interpretations appear to violate one or more of our commonsense notions about the world. Indeed, Cramer's advanced and retarded waves appear to violate our common notions of time. But that's not a problem for me - I never supposed commonsense would be a useful tool when investigating uncommon realms. I enjoyed reading your post, Cyperium. The more I also come to understand, the more I stand in awe. Since the days of Copernicus man has been been forced further and further onto the sidelines. Voltaire spoke of man as an atom on a particle of mud. One wonderful aspect of QMs is that it brings man back into the center of his world. I think this world comes to us in kit-form, but it comes to us without an assembly manual. It's our job to put a world together and it falls upon us to write the manual as we go. John Myhill correctly noted: "No non-poetic account of reality can be complete." I don't believe any account of reality will ever be complete - how could it be as long as men are alive to add to it? But we can be complete despite our not having a complete account of reality. In his, Letters to a Young Poet, Ranier Maria Rilke wrote: "If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches." Michael
Well, Nothing is a very subjective word isn't it? Usually we use it to describe the state of being without something (specific), such as money, food, confidence, talent etc. But there is no such thing as true nothingness. All inner and outer space is chock a block full of things we cannot even see.
Everything and nothing are one in the same. Illusion of reality is created when it is seen that there is a difference between the two.
The idea of 'nothing' turns out to be incoherent however you try to define it. This is why all scientific explanations of existence fall apart when they get to their own metaphysics. In Plato's terms they are forever doomed to stare self-referentially at the shadows on the cave wall. However it is quite possible that what underlies existence is emptiness, for this is a different thing.
I personally think most things in images, so I'll have to disagree mostly because a concept can transform into a image/sound/smell/anything. But images has little to do with nothing, and so does any concept of nothing, since every concept has a feeling rather than nothing, then there is something, there's no such thing as a nothing-feeling (maybe you feel nothing is lonelyness and darkness etc. but then you describe nothing with something, and that cannot be done). Or maybe we can conceive of nothing as long as we have something to compare it to. But then we only get a small part of nothing that is described by what exists, the hard part is describing nothing with it's true nature. We cannot compare it with anything else in the same class, cause nothing is the same everywhere, and to conceive of anything we have to compare it with something else that gives it a contrast. Maybe compare it with the soul? Is that the other side of nothing? Is that the "something"?
Well Cyperium, you seem to have just dived straight in there. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Straight to the heart of the topic. Build up?? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! However... Yes, that's the way it seems to be. I wouldn't say it's nothing that exists, rather that it seems easier to accept (as 'reality') what can be sensed through our bodily senses. Thus the body becomes most highly prized.
Yep, I usually do so, I believe that if you listen too much to what other's have to say before you say something, then you might get so many ideas in your head that you don't know why you got involved in the first place. Also a reason for diving straight in is if you and another have the same idea, then that idea is worth building on. If there is any chance that you got inspired by the other person then it's hard to know if you got the idea in the first place or if you were inspired by his idea. If you both have the same idea then it's a good chance that it's a clue about the truth, but if you don't know if you were inspired by the other, or the other were inspired by you, then it's hard to see if there really was a 'common truth' to it. I agree, in a way nothing cannot exist, but what we see as nothing must then be something, and that something must be infinite (cause if it weren't then nothing would exist (nothing would fill the gaps between the "somethings"), and sure we all agree that we cannot allow that to happen). In a sense though, if there is a invisible field filling the gaps then we could actually see the "nothing" behind the field...but then that field had to be infinite (have infinite number of parts, filling the infinity between the parts), we can't really get around the infinity problem.
Actually infinity isn't a problem for me, but is a problem for science because it has to define it in some way, and that can't be done since infinite is so infinitly beyond us, also math usually tries to avoid infinity, since each infinity leads to another infinity and so on... (at least I've heard something like that somewhere). Sure there is a math for infinities, but that math is forever incomplete.
Yep. 'Nothing' and 'infinity' are the two things that cause problems in all strictly systematic models of reality.
But images has little to do with nothing, and so does any concept of nothing, since every concept has a feeling rather than nothing, then there is something, there's no such thing as a nothing-feeling (maybe you feel nothing is lonelyness and darkness etc. but then you describe nothing with something, and that cannot be done). Or maybe we can conceive of nothing as long as we have something to compare it to. But then we only get a small part of nothing that is described by what exists, the hard part is describing nothing with it's true nature. We cannot compare it with anything else in the same class, cause nothing is the same everywhere, and to conceive of anything we have to compare it with something else that gives it a contrast. Maybe compare it with the soul? Is that the other side of nothing? Is that the "something"? Nothing is that no-time before your conception of which you have no recollection. The universe is more confined than you think. The universe has not existed for billions of years- it has only been here for as long as you have been alive, and it will die along with you. Your life and death is the extent of the universe; beyond that there is nothing. Before your birth, time did not flow and the universe did not move. There was nothing yet there was everything. Perception is deception. The more intelligent and aware a creature is, the more convincing that illusion becomes. An ant is therefore closer to the truth(nothing) than we are. Nothing cannot be experienced, nor can it be concieved. Perhaps it can be approached, but only as much as a number can approach infinity.
Sure but that's a slow fade that's bigger than our focus, and therefor nothing is still not available to us, our memory get's weaker and weaker and it's harder and harder to move the focus. If I got you correctly then you are talking about us as "overlapping/completing" eachother with our picture of reality, each has a universe of it's own and each universe is a part of the real one. A new idea that I got is that the universe is at a constant race against nothing, where nothing exists between every point like a black hole, constantly sucking up every point between, and that the universe recreates itself all the time, and that is how time moves forward, allways trying to fool nothingness by changing it's appearence allthough it allways remains the same. I believe that Big Bang is "frozen" in time, in the middle of every point, that everything is just buildt on top of eachother, I also believe that time is a illusion that makes it seem that each moment is new, while in fact each moment just changes the angle of the same thing, trying to fool nothing. Should we really allow nothingness to win? Or is nothingness the final goal? Since we don't know what to do, we shouldn't stop it or intervene with it, unless we are sure what will happen, the universal principles will solve it hopefully for us. I'm not sure about this so don't take it too serious.
Then everything must be infinite, or else nothing would fill the gaps. The idea I have is that if nothing would fill the gaps then everything is allways "swallowed" by nothing, but is forever recreating itself, and so time is moving forward. Just an idea, I'm not sure if that's the way it is or if there is something else to it. Sure everything is relative to something, but everything is also relative to nothing (or infinity-nothing), but in that sense, the opposite of infinity would be infinitly small, which is allways included in infinity anyway. (cause if it weren't it wouldn't be room for a infinity of points (each point has to be infinitly small)). I now think that "nothing" could exist in some way or another, but not in any way that could be observed. And thus maybe nothing doesn't exist after all, cause there's allways something beneath where it seems to be nothing. For example, nothing would exist if it didn't have something to exist in. The "in" must allways exist in some way, there must allways be a room for something to exist in. But nothing must allways exist by itself, it cannot have any room of it's own, and therefor will never be observed since it has no contrast.
