What Does Nothing Actually Mean?

“…when I think over the weirdest of all things I can think of, you know what it is? Nothing.”- Alan Watts

Linguistically and conceptually, we know that nothing is the absence of a thing or things in a particular space. We might say that there is nothing in a glass when we mean that there is no liquid. We might say that there is nothing in a room when we mean that there is no stuff. And we might say that there is nothing in a vacuum of space when we mean that there is no matter or atoms at all. However, true, absolutely nothing is perhaps something else entirely. True nothingness might be nothing more than an abstract idea that doesn’t really mean anything outside of language. Or perhaps, it might be a fundamental quality of all reality. A void with a function. For obvious reasons, physics and quantum field theory look towards empty space as a definition or understanding of nothingness. One could study empty space by taking a fully sealed metal container and sucking out all of the air. Inside would then become a vacuum, void of all atoms and molecules. But when particle physicists do this and probe a vacuum, the space still actually contains quantum mechanical properties. These properties have the minimum possible energy a system can have and are in what is known as a zero-point energy state, which involves local quantum fields and virtual particles, but the point is, there is not nothing. There are things going on with measurable properties. Consequently, all the empty space of the universe isn’t really nothing. As a result, science doesn’t really take much interest into what true nothingness is and what it’s metaphysical implications might be, because science doesn’t really care about what it can’t measure because how could it? But that doesn’t necessarily make it any less relevant to everything.

In the words of theoretical physicist Sean Carrol, “It’s probably better to think of nothing as the absence of even space and time, rather than space and time without anything in them."

To try to consider this sort of true nothing - as in, to try to the imagine the subtraction of everything in the entire universe including time and space itself one could theoretically do this and picture a sort of stark, black void. But of course, one would still be left with themselves considering the absence of everything, and thus, by defining or imagining this, one is still ascribing a somethingness to nothingness. A thought. A concept. Not nothing.

Naturally, because of the dissonance and strangeness of such an idea, nothingness can be rather intriguing, terrifying, or both. Also, of course, for some, the mere verbal construction of “the concept of nothing” is enough to reduce the entire validity of the idea into absurdity. To try to understand nothing sounds obscenely unnecessary and foolish. And it might be. But what isn’t than? To question why or how anything is is, at bottom, to eventually question everything. And to question why and how everything is is, at bottom, to eventually question nothingness. When followed to their end, all inquiries ultimately lead to the questions: why is there something rather than nothing? How? And is there nothing beyond it? Many of the significant philosophers of history like Parmenides, Immanuel Kant, Hegel, Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and many more; as well as many religious and spiritual ideas suggested in Buddhism, Taoism, and the very essence of God; as well as research areas in science – especially that of physics and quantum field theory; all focus at least some of their discourse, effort, and intrigue on the mystifying potential relevance of nothing.

Arguably, in some faint, strange, sensorial way, throughout moments of our life, we have likely all come in contact with a sort of metaphysical nothingness. Many philosophers like Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre suggested that we sense the nothingness through moods like anxiety, dread, or a dizzying nausea; a sort of premonition or awareness of the thin veneer and emptiness behind everything. We might feel this when we are alone at night, having trouble falling asleep, or during a strange moment while having a meal or watching tv, or when we are somewhere out in public and something comes up that instils a certain anxiety in which we seem to suddenly realize that this all sort of just showed up out of nothing. And that we will all be returning to that. And if that’s the case, what is that nothing? Just on the other side of our skull or underneath everything we perceive as real, what really is that? What could possibly be the absence of all things, time, and space? We might contrive all sorts of ideas for an afterlife, but we have no reason to believe after life is anything different from what came before it. If our consciousness is infinite and there is an afterlife, then our same consciousness would have had to precede before this life, which no one could possibly claim as a self-identifying person.

The philosophical view known as Idealism posits that reality is, in some necessary way, linked with and dependent on cognitive perception and the understanding of ideas. This is not necessarily to say that the physical matter of one’s body or things outside of one’s body occur only in consciousness, but that one’s knowledge of their reality only occurs in consciousness and thus, their reality is interdependent on consciousness. Even if one doesn’t agree with Idealism, one could still likely agree with the premise that our mind creates – or allows - our sense and experience of being. And so, if our mind and consciousness are lost upon death, then we are faced with a nonbeing of reality. A point at which we could no longer even imagine everything in the universe being removed because, as the imaginer, we would be too. This, of course, would potentially be the absolutely nothing. It is strange and rather terrifying to consider this; that we can be something for now and nothing forever. But perhaps only because of the fact that we are nothing forever, can we be something for now. A negation of all other things across all other time and space; a being amidst everything else, and nothing more; and perhaps only because of which, we are something right now. Following some semblance of the metaphysical train of thought of the 20th century German philosopher Martin Heidegger as well as the 20th century French philosopher Jean-Paul Sarte, the nothing comes first. Nothingness precedes consciousness, and the conscious act of negating, or imagining nothing, is an act that is derived from the nothingness. In other words, the non-being acts on being, allowing the intellect to negate everything except itself back to it. For example, by self-identifying our self as our self, we have determined that we are our self-minus everything else, which is to also say, we are who we are and nothing else. Our total sum of perceptions and understandings, all determined through this same process of negating every individual thing from everything else, consolidates into the last and final negation of self-knowledge. Nothing isn’t the opposite of being nor what everything comes from per se, but what allows something to be at all. To potentially deviate from any specific philosophers’ train of thought, it is possible that nothing doesn’t necessarily create everything but rather, serves as the backdrop that allows everything. Like a blank canvas is to a painting, nothingness is to the being of the canvas itself. Likewise, to the painter painting and every particle involved. It could then follow that, at the risk of more seemingly rhetorical wordplay, everything and nothing are one, in simultaneous, interlocked coordination with one another; everything contained by nothing; nothing supposed by everything. The blank canvas to the paining. The empty glass to the glass of water. The empty room to the bedroom. The nothingness to all space and time. To you. In the words of Alan Watts, “So in this way, by seeing that nothingness is the fundamental reality, and you see it's your reality, then how can anything contaminate you? All the idea of you being scared and put out and worried and so on is just nothing. It's a dream. Because you're really nothing. But this is most incredible nothing. So, cheer up! You see?” When we are tuned into this nothingness of being, and truly confront it as a potentially equal part, it could and likely should be followed with a deep recognition of the thin temporariness coated over everything, and thus, the importance of focusing - not on some ultimate end game goal, but on the very real implications that there are none. That the ever-fleeting present is all there is – slid through us at the intersection of the mystical oneness of all things and nothing. And perhaps, as such, we should try our best to be careful of what we take seriously - and don’t. As long as we are, we cannot escape the everything that is created through us nor the nothing that we created it from. This very creative intuition fills the poetry and art and literature and philosophies and religions and sciences and perhaps the general history of everything past and yet to come. A passion. A longing. A meaning. An anxiety. A dread. A synergy with the same mystery that lit the stars. We all share in this transient retreat to and from and through nothing. And thus, in the most rhetorically ironic yet beautiful way, we are all connected by nothing. We might never know what nothing is until we know nothing at all. And even then, we might not. We are all free to imagine nothing how we like. Because if nothingness is in fact the source and destiny that connects us all, through which, perhaps anything is possible.