Could there ever be nothing?

[pocaracas]

I read many confusing things on here…
Nothing before something? Does this mean that there was time when there was nothing? Well then it wasn’t nothing, but rather something.

Is the vacuum of space nothing?

I agree that the philosophical nothing - no matter, no energy, no time, no space, nothing at all - can’t be a state of affairs from which our current existence could crop up.
It is certain that the known Universe seems to have had a point of high density beyond which next to nothing can be ascertained with any certainty.

So we don’t know.
We don’t know if a before the big bang makes sense.
We don’t know if causality is conserved in such conditions.
If both these two unknowns turn out positive, we still don’t know the previous conditions.
Some claim there needs to be a prime mover, a first cause to our Universe… maybe.
Some will then claim that cause to be one that has some reasoning capabilities - here I struggle to follow the logic… and that’s where our thinking diverges.
In light of the apparent evolution of our Universe from simple elements, to stars, to solar systems and planets where some can then harbor simple biochemical elements that evolve into ever complex living entities, I’d find it more expectable that any pre-Universe state should be simpler or more elementary than the known Universe is and was.

 

[neophyte]

but nothing is something

That’s where you have it wrong. Nothing is an abstract principle, it is the name we give for the state in which there are no things; nothing is not a thing any more than one is a thing.

 

[iggypkrebsbach]

I’ve pondered, albeit not much, the question that if there were not God, the uncaused cause, then there could only be nothing, and nothing would exist, but nothing is something, so could nothing ever be?

Hi Joe,

Absolute nothingness is nonsense. Nothingness can only be understood in a relative sense. We learned that a long time ago from Parmenides. We can only conclude: Something (or other) must exist.