Nothing can create something

[Trestone]

Never mind that you won't accept that 1/0 is not defined, let's have a look at the rest of your post.

 

"Although its hypothetical, if nothing existed in fact, then maybe this equation could be the reason for everything."

 

If nothing existed then that equation wouldn't exist- so it couldn't be the reason for anything.

 

Hello,

 

I see one more (philosophical) problem:

 

If nothing existed, may be logic would not exist as well,

as we learned with time in physics ...

 

For I think that logic has developed with mind and could therefore be dependent from the existence of something.

 

What the (illogical?) consequences for "if nothing existed" are ore would be (if any) , I do not know ...

 

Yours

Trestone

 

 

 

 

[michel123456]

There are 2 problems IMHO

 

1. philosophically, "Nothing" can not exist, because if "Nothing" existed, then it would be "Something".

 

2. mathematically, I wonder if "zero" is equal to "nothing". It may also mean equilibrium.

[rktpro]

There are 2 problems IMHO

 

1. philosophically, "Nothing" can not exist, because if "Nothing" existed, then it would be "Something".

 

 

Words can not always explain a situation in philosophy.

'Nothing' is a word to show complete absence of 'something'.

[michel123456]

Words can not always explain a situation in philosophy.

'Nothing' is a word to show complete absence of 'something'.

 

In this case the problem is not in the word "nothing" or the word "something", the problem is in the word "exist".

[Daedalus]

Shouldn't this thread be in speculation?

[PeterJ]

Dean - I think the issue you raise is important. It has far reaching implications for mathematics, physics, religion, psychology and who knows what else.

 

Most of us have this idea that 'Nothing' is the opposite of 'Something. It is, of course, conceptually or in epistemology. But in ontology we cannot take this for granted. The idea of 'Nothing' would be impossible without the idea of 'Something', so to suppose that one comes before the other does not work. One ends up in a Wittgensteinian muddle. This issue is central to the dispute between 'eastern' and western' cosmology.

 

Here is Lao-tsu proposing what might seem to be the same thing as yourself.

 

"Tao begot one,

One begot two,

Two begot three,

And three begot the ten thousand things."

 

Also relevant would be ...

 

"Being is born of not being".

 

Here Tao', however, would not mean 'Nothing', and Being and non-Being would be reducible to Tao. Tao would give rise to both Being and non-Being, both nothing and something, both zero and one. One could think of these distinctions as broken symmetries.

 

This idea would be the basis for Spencer Brown's 'calculus of indications' as presented in his book 'Laws of Form'. This is a mathematical model of how forms emerge from formlessness.

 

The distinction we make between 'Something' and 'Nothing' is in our minds. When we imagine 'Nothing' what we actually imagine is a void. An imagined void is not nothing. Prior to this void there would be a state free of all distinctions. ('beyond the 'coincidence of contradictories' in the language of mysticism). Your view, therefore, is not fundamental. If you look at it closely you'll see that your universe begins only after a distinction between 'Something' and 'Nothing' has been made. That's not a complete reduction. For a fundamental theory you would need to go one step further back, to what Brown's likens to a blank piece of paper, or to what Lao Tsu calls 'Tao'.

 

Note that physics, strictly defined, cannot yet distinguish 'something' from 'nothing'. It never will, since solipsism is unfalsifiable.

 

Lao Tsu's comment on the origin of numbers may look a bit arbitrary from a mathematical persective, but Brown shows that in set theory it can be used to solve Russell's paradox for a fundamental theory. It also contains a major clue as to why the prime numbers >3 occur only at 6n+/-1.

 

Paul Davies is very good on this topic. In The Mind of God he talks about Rucker's 'Mindscape', the set of all possible ideas. He notes that this is itself an idea, so it cannot be 'Everything'. There has to be something that is not an idea. Heisenberg also pointed this out. If you check your reasoning you'll see that 'Nothing' is an idea, and so is 'Something', and that they are co-dependent. There has to be another term in the system to represent what cannot be imagined, an idea that you cannot have. This allows us to dismiss ex nihilo creation not just for being logically absurd but also for being nonreductive. We would have to dig deeper. Thus Davies ends up speculating about mysticism, for which there is an undefined term in the cosmological system.

Edited October 21, 2011 by PeterJ

[baric]

1 divided by 0 = Infinity

thus 0 x Infinity = 1

 

and 0 = nothing & 1 = something thus 0 x Infinity = Infinite nothing which equals to 1 thus

 

 

 

You don't need to jump through so many hoops. If 0 is nothing and 1 is something, then you can simply get 1 from 0 by acknowledging -1.

 

 

Therefore you have 1 and -1, which make 0. Two somethings out of nothing.

[webplodder]

The catch here, I think, is as soon as you give something a name, even 'nothing', you have created an idea which, therefore, cannot literally mean nothing in the sense of not existing. Only stuff that has never been thought about literally cannot exist. Even a unicorn exists as a concept and as such can be seen in books and movies etc. even though not existing in the natural world. It might even come to exist one day as a genetically engineered species and this is only possible because it first existed an an idea. As soon as you say something came from nothing you have created a thought which itself is something, not nothing. Think of it as allocating the label 'nothing' as a placeholder for an idea which might well be modified in the future. One thing science teaches us it that things never stay the same; current ideas will eventually be replaced by newer ones so that the important element here is consciousness. The universe, in my view, is not so much 'there' as it is 'interpreted'. In mathematics 0 denotes nothing but it is still an important concept and an essential element in making maths logically consistent. If 0 literally did not exist it would have to be invented.

Edited October 21, 2011 by webplodder

[Aristarchus in Exile]

O is the only number which is infinite.

 

"A star can be made out of nothing at all because at point of zero volume its negative gravitational energy precisely cancels out its positive mass energy." Pascual Jordan, one of the fathers of quantu7m mechanics, friend of Einstein

[questionposter]

I figured it out: If there's literally infinite nothing, then there's infinite probability for anything to happen. There's no matter to say "this matter can't exist here because there's already matter here", there's no magnetic fields determining energy levels or anything, there's nothing to say that any particular thing can't exist. It's possible that you might even be use the uncertainty principal in some way to say "something infinitely precise is infinitely delocalized", and thus a particle of nothingness containing all probability extends infinitely through space containing all probable locations and energy levels, it sort of reminds of me imaginary numbers.

Edited October 22, 2011 by questionposter

[michel123456]

I figured it out: If there's literally infinite nothing, then there's infinite probability for anything to happen. (...)

That's approximatively my point of vue too. With 2 amendments:

1. anything mutualy possible to happen. IOW not wathever "any thing", but "some thing".

2. if there is infinite probability for something to happen, then infinite nothing could never exist in the first place: absolute nothingness is impossible.

Edited October 22, 2011 by michel123456

[Aristarchus in Exile]

Even a unicorn exists as a concept and as such can be seen in books and movies etc. even though not existing in the natural world.

 

Unicorns almost certainly existed in the form presented in children's books. The imagery is too powerful and consistant through ages and cultures to be myth. We cannot know the number or form of creatures which have gone extinct.

[michel123456]

Aouch. You cannot be serious.

[Aristarchus in Exile]

Aouch. You cannot be serious.

 

Serious about what, unicorns? Yes.

[michel123456]

You were serious. I need a beer now.

 

Is there a mod here around to split this thread into "do you believe unicorns once existed?" We've gone far from Analysis & Calculus.

[Aristarchus in Exile]

You were serious. I need a beer now.

 

Is there a mod here around to split this thread into "do you believe unicorns once existed?" We've gone far from Analysis & Calculus.

 

Which forum would unicorns prance cutely and with spirit into? You might do better with rum.

Edited October 22, 2011 by Aristarchus in Exile

[webplodder]

This thread is about whether something can come from nothing. The crucial question here is what you mean by nothing. If you mean something can come from nothing where you never re-examine what is meant by nothing then I do not think it is meaningful to assert it does because then you might as well forget about science and attribute things to some god or gods . Science functions by testing ideas and possibly falsifying them but never, never jumping to definite conclusions so that to conclude something can come from nothing would simply be taking an unproven position. What it should be is a starting position subject to modification based on future ideas and experiments. Interestingly, if it turned out something could come from nothing then it would totally undermine causality and make a mockery of science. It would mean our scientific models of reality only applied within certain limits and outside of these science could have no application.

 

Which forum would unicorns prance cutely and with spirit into? You might do better with rum.

 

 

The concept of unicorns was simply used illustrate that despite something not actually having any objective reality, the idea does because an idea is a product of the brain and as the brain does objectively exist so does the idea. Ultimately, everything is just an idea, maths., art, love, ethics and so forth and the point is ideas can easily turn into more concrete entities as we have spectacularly seen over the last few centuries. This relates to the original topic of this thread by redefining what is meant by 'nothing' and puts it into a wider context.

[questionposter]

This thread is about whether something can come from nothing. The crucial question here is what you mean by nothing. If you mean something can come from nothing where you never re-examine what is meant by nothing then I do not think it is meaningful to assert it does because then you might as well forget about science and attribute things to some god or gods . Science functions by testing ideas and possibly falsifying them but never, never jumping to definite conclusions so that to conclude something can come from nothing would simply be taking an unproven position. What it should be is a starting position subject to modification based on future ideas and experiments. Interestingly, if it turned out something could come from nothing then it would totally undermine causality and make a mockery of science. It would mean our scientific models of reality only applied within certain limits and outside of these science could have no application.

 

Maybe you can't test those things with science, but you can create accurate mathematical equations.

Edited October 23, 2011 by questionposter

[webplodder]

Maybe you can't test those things with science, but you can create accurate mathematical equations.

 

 

Yes you can, and maybe you can create mathematical models which are self-consistent but still, you have to test these at some point. The universe is not obliged to follow the way we imagine it is.

[cosmic rain]

Why can't we have a practical shot here. Create a vacuum inside a bell jar and now think how something might be created. Beware you can use no other chemical or even the contents of bell jar. Only the vacuum is yours!

 

 

Under laboratory conditions, a famous English physicist by the name of Paul Dirac discovered the presence of virtual pairs in a vacuum. Awhile back Stephen Hawking wrote a book about zero, and posited that the universe could never achieve zero because of virtual pair production. This goes to show you how limited our thinking was before the question of space became so popular. Even without a universe or virtual pairs you still don't have zero as long as there is space. A mistake in numerology science can often lead to a mistake in cosmology science as it has in the past, however mathematicians are a lot smarter and wiser about it today. After all, they are the ones who brought up the question of space in the first place.

 

Maybe you can't test those things with science, but you can create accurate mathematical equations.

 

Just wanted you to know I agree with your statement 100%.

 

Yes you can, and maybe you can create mathematical models which are self-consistent but still, you have to test these at some point. The universe is not obliged to follow the way we imagine it is.

 

The universe is obliged to follow the way nature intended. There is nature, and then there is the action of nature, the universe. So far, none of our known mathematics has been able to explain nature. This leaves the question of unknown mathematics open to possibility.

 

There are 2 problems IMHO

 

1. philosophically, "Nothing" can not exist, because if "Nothing" existed, then it would be "Something".

 

2. mathematically, I wonder if "zero" is equal to "nothing". It may also mean equilibrium.

 

 

Nothing cannot have representation as a zero because zero is information.

[Axioms]

Dean Mullen

Imagine a world were literally nothing existed, something never came into existence and there is just infinite nothing, well you then realized based on maths that even nothing must produce something because:

 

1 divided by 0 = Infinity

thus 0 x Infinity = 1

 

and 0 = nothing & 1 = something thus 0 x Infinity = Infinite nothing which equals to 1 thus

 

eternal nothing = 1 something

 

just as

 

Infinity x 0 = 1

 

so in other words eternal nothing must produce 1/Infinite the size of the nothing of something, thus nothing must create something.

 

Although its hypothetical, if nothing existed in fact, then maybe this equation could be the reason for everything.

 

Dean Mullen, on 12 February 2011 - 06:40 PM, said:

 

But 1 = 0.9999.... and 1 = 1.0000.......1 so 1 - 1 can equals 1.00000.....1 - 1 = 0.0000....1 so 0.000....1 x Infinity = 1 yet 0.000....1 = 0 so 0 x Infinity = 1 hence if 0 x Infinity = 1 then 1 divided by 0 = Infinity? or is this incorrect.

 

 

Everything you said here is wrong. You are also basing your whole hypothosis on maths, that we created and not linking it to a physical aspect, to try and explain physical phenomena. There are experiments that show that even in a vaccume something exists by popping in and out of reality. Interesting topics on theories of where these particles come from.