Faces of zero. Why do we associate nothingness with impossibility? What are the odds of drawing a queen from a deck from which she has been removed? 0/48, no chance. It’s *impossible*. When a particular thing is absent, no event involving that thing may occur *in the context from which it has been removed*. This is why we associate nothingness with impossibility, why we say “ex nihilo nihil fit.” - interpreting this as a constraint. The situation of something coming from nothing is quite different however. The nothing - the face of zero - in question is not the result of a process of subtraction. Nothing has taken place. Nothing is absent. Because an “absence” is a result of a process of subtraction. These are two *different* faces of zero, the original nothing, and the nothing that results from subtraction.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 15:40:14 +0000
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