Nothing is no thing,[1] denoting the absence of something. Nothing is a pronoun associated with nothingness,[1] which is also an adjective, and an object as a concept in the Frege-Church ontology.
In nontechnical uses, nothing denotes things lacking importance, interest, value, relevance, or significance.[1] Nothingness is the state of being nothing,[2] the state of nonexistence of anything, or the property of having nothing. Contents[hide] * 1 Philosophy * 1.1 Western philosophy * 1.1.1 Parmenides * 1.1.2 Leucippus * 1.1.3 Aristotle * 1.1.4 John the Scot * 1.1.5 G. W. F. Hegel * 1.1.6 Existentialists * 1.2 Eastern philosophy * 2 Language and logic * 3 Mathematics * 4 Computing * 5 Physics * 6 See also * 7 Notes * 8 References * 9 External links |
[edit] Philosophy
[edit] 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.[3] | ” |

However, "nothingness" has been treated as a serious subject worthy of research 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 unambiguously make clear what is being