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An entertaining history of the idea of nothing - including absences, omissions, and shadows - from the Ancient Greeks through the 20th century
How can nothing cause something? The absence of something might seem to indicate a null or a void, an emptiness as ineffectual as a shadow. In fact, 'nothing' is one of the most powerful ideas the human mind has ever conceived. This short and entertaining book by Roy Sorensen is a lively tour of the history and philosophy of nothing, explaining how various thinkers throughout history have conceived and grappled with the mysterious power of absence — and how these ideas about shadows, gaps, and holes have in turned played a very positive role in the development of some of humankind's most important ideas. Filled with Sorensen's characteristically entertaining mix of anecdotes, puzzles, curiosities, and philosophical speculation, the book is ordered chronologically, starting with the Taoists, the Buddhists, and the ancient Greeks, moving forward to the middle ages and the early modern period, then up to the existentialists and present day philosophy. The result is a diverting tour through the history of human thought as seen from a novel and unusual perspective.
Introduction
Nothing Represented
1 The Makapansgat Hominid: Pictorial Absence
2 Hermetes Trismegistus: Discursive Absence
Relative Nothing
3 Lao Tzu: Absence of Action
4 Buddha: Absence of Wholes
5 Nagarjuna: Absence of Ground
Absolute Nothing
6 Parmenides: Absence of Absence
7 Anaxagoras: Absence of Total Absences
8 Leucippus: Local Absolute Absences
Potential Nothing
9 Plato: Shades of Absence
10 Aristotle: Potential Absence meets Absence of Potential
11 Lucretius: Your Future Infinite Absence
Divine Nothing
12 Saint Katherine of Alexandria: Absence of Non-existent Women Philosophers
13 Augustine: The Evil of Absence is an Absence of Evil
14 Fridugisus: Synesthesia and Absences
15 Maimonides: The Divination of Absence
Scientific Nothing
16 Bradwardine: Absence of Determination
17 Newton: A Safe Space for Absence
18 Leibniz: Absence of Contradiction
Secular Nothing
19 Schopenhauer: Absence of Meaning
20 Bergson: The Evolution Absence
21 Sartre: Absence Perceived
22 Bertrand Russell: Absence of Referents
References
Description
An entertaining history of the idea of nothing - including absences, omissions, and shadows - from the Ancient Greeks through the 20th century
How can nothing cause something? The absence of something might seem to indicate a null or a void, an emptiness as ineffectual as a shadow. In fact, 'nothing' is one of the most powerful ideas the human mind has ever conceived. This short and entertaining book by Roy Sorensen is a lively tour of the history and philosophy of nothing, explaining how various thinkers throughout history have conceived and grappled with the mysterious power of absence — and how these ideas about shadows, gaps, and holes have in turned played a very positive role in the development of some of humankind's most important ideas. Filled with Sorensen's characteristically entertaining mix of anecdotes, puzzles, curiosities, and philosophical speculation, the book is ordered chronologically, starting with the Taoists, the Buddhists, and the ancient Greeks, moving forward to the middle ages and the early modern period, then up to the existentialists and present day philosophy. The result is a diverting tour through the history of human thought as seen from a novel and unusual perspective.
