Re: Why is there something instead of nothing?

From: scerir <scerir.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 22:35:43 +0100

> Does this question have an answer? I think the question shows there is a
> limit to our understanding of things and is unanswerable. Does anybody
> disagree?
> Norman

"The less anything is,
the less we know it:
how invisible,
how unintelligible a thing,
then, is this Nothing!"
John Donne

The "Nothing will come of nothing",
of King Lear, seems in trouble, since
von Neumann identified zero with the empty
set and then identified one with the set
which contains the empty set ... et cetera.
And J.Conway defined a new family of numbers
constructed out of sequences of binary choices.

But is zero, or the empty set = nothing?
Hmmmm ... definitely not for John Donne.
Received on Sun Nov 16 2003 - 16:35:36 PST