Much ado about Nothing

What’s in your pocket, Simmons?” the teacher asks accusingly.

“Nothing, sir”

“Then empty your pocket and show me.”

Simmons reluctantly empties out his pocket, displaying fifty five pence in small change, a piece of used chewing gum and a dead mouse wrapped in his handkerchief, having successfully palmed the crib sheet that the teacher knew was there. The teacher, having been thwarted on this occasion reluctantly accepts that there is nothing there, nothing, that is, that could incriminate his pupil.

Young Simmons on reaching home is greeted by a harassed mother, who is looking to catch him out at something.

“Albert, what have you got in your pocket?”

“Nothing, mother”

“Then empty it and show me”

Albert had anticipated the situation and disposed of any potentially offending material, emptied out the fifty five pence and the now empty handkerchief. Mother was not satisfied.

“There, I knew it! There is a hole starting, you must have had something sharp in it.”

Albert, as it happened had not had anything sharp in it ever since his chipped glass marble had been confiscated. But he had been caught out by the unexpected. Albert and his teacher had agreed there was nothing in his rather full pocket, while mother had found something in his rather emptier pocket; she had found something, the potential hole, which was not even there yet.

So we see that the difference between ‘something’ and ‘nothing’ is very much in the eye of the beholder. Had the question been:

“Simmons (or Albert), how many things are in your pocket?” then Albert (or Simmons), possibly after again palming any controversial items, would have been forced to display his counting ability, as would teacher and mother, and all would have agreed on a tangible total, except perhaps after some discussion of the validity of including the invisible hole-to-be.

What I am getting at is that ‘something’, ‘nothing’ and ‘how many’ are perhaps not quite as simple as they first appear, particularly ‘nothing’. I single out ‘nothing’ for special attention because it has special significance in many arguments as to whether or not God exists.

Let us now leave Master Simmons to continue his complex interactions with mother and teacher. We wish him well, but he has now served his purpose. Instead we are going to look into an empty box. We take the lid off and all agree that the box is indeed empty; there is absolutely nothing in it. But there is; it is full of air, so it is not quite empty. We could put on a very tight lid and attach the box to a powerful vacuum pump. However even if we could produce a perfect vacuum, which we cannot, it would still have electromagnetic waves going through it, from our radio, TV and phones, as well as the cosmos itself. It still would not be empty. We could surround it by lead casing to stop the electromagnetic waves from entering, but what about those trapped inside? Even if we could eliminate them, there would still be atoms bouncing in and out of the interior surfaces of the box, imperceptible distances perhaps, but nonetheless there. We still do not have a box which contains nothing.

So we, as practical human beings, cannot seem to produce a state of ‘nothing’; there is always ‘something’ there. Does this matter? Why should I care? It does not pay the rent or feed the children or help or hinder me in any way. Do not bother me any more about ‘nothing’. But it does matter: we are led to believe by science that it is very likely that the universe and all that is in it, including us, came from ‘nothing’. Does this make sense? Think about it some more. If we could produce a ‘nothing’ then it could not contain anything, not even ‘nothing’. We could not add anything to it, nor take anything away from it, for there is nothing there to begin with.

Now in mathematics and science ‘nothing’ does have a meaning, and a very useful one, particularly in building models of the origins of the universe thus giving us a better understanding of our world. However, just because it is a valuable concept does not mean it is a reality, just as the mere concept of a god would make God a reality. Therefore for our immediate purposes we shall continue to admire ‘nothing’ as a scientific concept but will dismiss it from our practical view of the world.

However there is another very important concept that all of use know about but often mix up with ‘nothing’. It is ‘none’, often called ‘zero’ or ‘nought’. When we say we have nothing we really mean we have none of something. We may well have lots of something else but none of the particular item under consideration. We can even have less than none; if we are in overdraft with the bank we do not just have no money, we have negative money in the bank.

From now on, in order to avoid confusion with ‘nothing’ we shall refer to ‘none’ or ‘nought’ as ‘zero’. It is fundamentally different from ‘nothing’; it is zero of something. Unlike ‘nothing’, we can add to it and take away from it. We can split it into tangible non-zeros. If your overdraft is a thousand pounds and you pay in a two cheques each for five hundred pounds then your bank balance becomes zero; the zero being made up of the total of three items of the same something: money. So for every tangible thing there could be an equally tangible negative thing. Alright, we may not be able to see the negatives thing, but we certainly know that is there. Take money; we cannot see the negative amounts but we can be painfully aware that they are there. Remember the electricity experiments we did at school. If we connected two batteries of equal voltage together, the volt meter read either twice the voltage or zero voltage, depending on whether we had got the polarities right. We cannot see negative electricity, but neither can we see positive electricity but we know they exist because we regularly use them.

In seeking to get an understanding of the structure and origins of the universe, scientists have come up with the very interesting idea of negative matter, or anti-matter as it is usually called. Many consider that for every basic tiny thing in the universe there is an anti- thing. We will not worry about what exactly these tiny things and anti-things are; the amazing result, if this theory is correct is that the sum total of everything in the universe is zero! Think of it; for example every atom or thing in your body, there are anti-things elsewhere in the universe which when added to those in your body add up to zero.

So when scientists say that that the sum of everything in the universe is zero, others say that this proves that we all came from nothing. QED, there is/is not a God. Take your pick.

My contention is that whether the universe and ultimately ourselves came from ‘nothing’ or ‘zero’ or ‘something else’, while of great interest, on its own tells us nothing about whether there is or is not a God. On the scientific evidence available we simply do not know, but that does not mean we should not try to find out. Even if we do not discover the ultimate truth we can learn a great deal on the way. It is like travelling from your home town or village to Xanadu without a map. We will often find ourselves going in the wrong direction or at a dead end, never actually getting there, but making some amazing discoveries on the journey. When we seek advice from a passer-by some will claim to know exactly where it is, some will say it does not exist except in the imagination of deranged poets, but most will say they think it must exist, but Heaven knows where. See you in Xanadu!

 

© Vic Forrington 2009

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