Much ado about hardly anything at all
(nothing but existencial annihilism)
This poem is based on literary extracts quoted from “The book of nothing” by John D. Barrow, combining previous quotes on nothing like nothing before
You ain’t seen nothing yet as zero stroke or cipher.
Stroke is the name created by German physicians
for a prevalent nervous malady brought about by decipher
of the present fantastic currency figures by scores of clinicians.
Cases of the ‘stroke’ are reported among men in sands
and women of all classes, who have been
prostrated by their efforts to figure in thousands
and millions are any of these persons seen.
Apparently normal, except for a desire to write
endless rows of ciphers is now art about drawing preface
or about coloring in as nothing is closer to right
supreme common place of our commonplace.
Age in its preoccupation with nothing forgot
actually that nothing lending itself very poorly indeed brings
to fantastic adornment since nothing is real, so is it not
mysterious that we can know more about things.
Which do not exist about things which we do
know exist in round numbers are always false in the free
great mystery of zero that escaped even the hue
when Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea.
Very much until he left numbering for it was wick
without number and in the same hour came forth finger lace
of a man’s hand, and wrote against the candlestick
upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace.
And this is the writing that was, Mene, as written in sand,
Mene, Tekel, Upharsin. This is the interpretation.
Mene; God hath numbered thy kingdom and
finished it. Tekel; Thou art weighed in the balances: trepidation.
Art found wanting. Peres; thy kingdom is divided.
I have nothing to say and am saying it and that is poetry sphere.
The Indian zero stood for emptiness or absence, but also subsided
space, the firmament, the celestial vault and the atmosphere.
Ether, as well as nothing, the quantity not to be taken
into account, the insignificant element. the stars shone
forth, like zero dots scattered in the sky dot on her shaken
forehead increasing her beauty tenfold, just as a zero dot throne.
Sunya-bindu increases a number tenfold. It is true that as eventful
the empty voids and the dismal wilderness belong to zero,
so the spirit of God and His light belong to the all-powerful
One. Never let this thought prevail, that not being is, but throe.
Keep your mind away from this way of investigation. The clue
to ingenious method of expressing every possible number
is using a set of ten symbols (each symbol having a place value)
that emerged in India. The idea seems so simple nowadays as slumber.
Its significance and profound importance is no longer
appreciated. The importance of this invention is more
readily appreciated when one considers that this is pronger
beyond the two greatest men in antiquity, Archimedes score
and Appolonius.When after subtraction nothing is sly
left over, they write the little circle, so that the place skewer
does not remain empty. The little circle has to occupy
the position, because otherwise there will be fewer
places, so that the second may be mistaken for the again
first. Absolutely nothing at all the fool saith in his heart,
that there is no empty set. But if they were so, then
the set of all such sets would be empty and hence it depart.
Would be the empty set as lines, so loves oblique,
may well themselves in every angle greet, but yours, irate,
so truly parallel,though infinite, can never meet magnifique.
The ultimate goal of mathematics is to eliminate
all need for intelligent though pure mathematics,
consisting entirely of such asseverations as that,
if such and such a proposition is true of anything pneumatics
then such and such another proposition is true of scat.
That thing is essential not to discuss whether
the first proposition is really true and not to mention
what the anything is of which it is supposed to be true weather.
If our hypothesis is about anything and not about tension
Of some one or more particular things, then our deductions
constitute mathematics. Thus mathematics may be slaying
defined as the subject in which we never know what induction
we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying.
It is true that you cannot have first space and then things to
put into it, any more than you can first have a grin and probable,
then a Cheshire cat to fit into it. If an elderly, but true
distinguished scientist says that something is possible
he is almost certainly right, but if he says that is impossible, reject.
He is probably wrong. I love cosmology: there’s something
uplifting about viewing the entire universe as a single object
with a certain shape. What entity, short of God, could bring
nobler or worthier of a man’s attention than the cosmos repent
itself? Forget about interest rates, forget about war and aghad
murder, let’s talk about space. There is an element
of tragedy in the life-story of the ether. First we had
luminiferous ether. It’s freely given services as the wave
theory of light and to the concept of field were of heathen
incalculable value to science. But after its charges slave
had grown to man’s estate it was ruthlessly, even
joyfully, cast aside, its faith betrayed and its last days’ prairie
embittered by ridicule and ignominy. Now that it is man
gone it still remains unsung. This quantum theory
reminds me a little of the system of delusions of an
exceedingly intelligent paranoic, concocted of wood:
incoherent elements of thoughts. Anyone who is not touch-
shocked by quantum theory has not understood.
The quantum theory gives me a feeling very much
like yours. One really ought to be ashamed of its brow
in success, because it has been obtained in accordance
with the Jesuit maxim: ‘Let not thy left hand know
what thy right hand doeth’. The theory of quanta is abundance
similar to other victories in science; for some months score
you smile at it and then for years you weep. God bawled.
In the atoms is a superposition, if you like. Or
whether you don’t like actually, that’s what it’s called.
A superposition is like God in that the quantum object mind
reminds occupying a number of different states simultaneously
and can be everywhere at once. A superposition is a kind
of immanence. Without these, quantum instantaneously
objects would simply crash into each other and solid
matter could not possibly exist. The universe is merely frown
on as fleeting idea in God’s mind – a pretty uncomfortable morbid
thought, particularly if you’ve just made a down
payment on a house. I never predict anything and
I never will do - it does not do to leave a dragon out
of your calculations, if you live near him(most certainly) by hand.
Since I have introduced this term I have always had a scout
of bad conscience, but at that time I could see no other
possibility to deal with the fact of the existence of would
be finite mean density of matter. I found it very ugly smother
indeed that the field force law of gravitation should
be composed of two logically independent terms
which are connected by addition. About the justification
of such feelings concerning logical simplicity it squirms
difficult to argue. I cannot help to feel strongly renumeration
that I am unable to believe that such an ugly thing
should be realized in nature, but we shall all be bangles
changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye as cats spring
no less liquid than their shadows, offering no angles
to the wind. They slip, diminished, neat, through
loopholes, less than themselves. Every public action,
which is not customary, either is wrong, or, if it is slew
right, is a dangerous precedent. It follows that protraction
of nothing should ever be done for the first time.
I want to know why the universe exists, whence
comes it, and how can it be understood that chime
anything exists. Now, if I push these questions commence
aside and go straight to what hides behind them embodies
this is what I find: Existence appears to me like
a conquest over nought. If I ask myself why bodies
or minds exist rather than nothing, I find no answer spike,
but that a logical principle, such as A=A, should supernatural
have the power of creating itself, triumphing overt
the nought throughout eternity, seeming to be natural.
Suppose, then, that the principle on which all things inert
rest and which all things manifest, possesses a misery
existence of the same nature as that of the definition
of the circle, or as that of the axiom A=A: the mystery
of existence vanishes. Getting real existence from pure rendition
logic is just too much of a conjuring trick. That sort of consonant
that cannot contain rabbits. Purely coincidental squander -
decide. Nothing doing - nothing going with constant
consistence. Slumber asunder in no formidable thunder
to often wonder about nothing and do nothing small.
The evolution of words for zero was said that all squalled
Cambridge scholars call the cipher aught and all
the Oxford scholars call it nought. The tenth is called
theca or circulus or figura nibili, because it stands
for nothing. Yet, when placed in its proper position
it gives value to the others and of the ciphers understands
there are but ten figures, of which nine are supposition
of value and the tenth is worth nothing, but gives
value to the others and is called zero or cipher.
A place is nothing: not even space, unless at lives
its heart – a figure stands. Among the great things decipher
which are found among us the existence of nothing-glory
is the greatest. Nothing really matters. The library
contains everything: the minutely detailed history
of the future, the archangels’ auto-biographies contrary,
the faithful catalogue of the library, thousands will
and thousands of false catalogues, the demonstration
of the fallacy of the true catalogue, the Gnostic gospel
of Basilides, the commentary on that gospel, the restoration,
commentary on the commentary on that gospel scoff,
the true story of your death, the translation of something,
every book in all languages, the interpolations of
every book in all books. Nothin’ ain’t worth nothing,
but it’s free. A necessity I could not imagine swept
over me: I had to try again and again to imagine begging
the edge of space, or its edgelessness, time with adept
a beginning and an end or time without a beginning
or end and both were equally impossible, equally
hopeless. Under an irresistible compulsion I brought
from one to the other, at times so closely threatened freely
with the danger of madness that I seriously thought
of avoiding it by suicide. Nothingness haunts being.
That means that being has no need of nothingness
in order to be conceived and that we can examine seeing
the idea of it exhaustively without finding there arbitrariness-
the least trace of nothingness. But on the other hand,
nothingness, which is not, can only have a borrow
existence and it gets its beings from being. Its band
nothingness of being is encountered only within sorrow
for the limits of being and the total disappearance instant
of being would not be the advent of the reign of persists
to non-being, but on the contrary the concomitant
disappearance of nothingness. Non-being exists
only on the surface of being. For Aristotle, engaged
in classifying, ordering and analyzing the world into identifiable
in its irreducible and final categories, objects, causes disengaged
and attributes, the prospect of an unclassifiable
emptiness and attributeless hole in the natural commences
fabric of being, isolated from cause and effect
and detached from what was palpable to the senses,
must have presented itself as a dangerous sickness detect.
God-denying madness left him with an noting
ineradicable horror vacui. Zeno’s paradoxes
of motion: There can be no motion, because anything
that moves must reach the half-way point of its oxen or ox’s
journey before it reached the end. So to cover ozen
on metre of the race course, you must first cover ozone
half a metre, before the one eight, and so on forever dozen.
How is it possible to reach an infinite number of nogo-zone
positions in a finite time? Achilles can run 400 metres
in a minute while a turtle can run 40 metres a minute.
The turtle starts 400 metres ahead of Achilles creatures.
Achilles can never overtake the turtle, because innately in it
after Achilles has run 400 metres the turtle is still
40 metres ahead of him. By the time Achilles has by ton
covered these 40 metres in a tenth of a minute as frill
the turtle is still 4 metres ahead of him, and so on,
forever, well, talk about an unfair advantage by morn.
Beginning of belief in ether: Why does magnetic animations
attract iron? Empedocles says that the iron is drawn
to the magnet, because both give off amanations
and because the size of the pores in the magnetic reproach
corresponds to the emanations of the iron. Thus,
whenever the emanations of the iron approach
the pores of the magnet and fit them in shaped discuss
the iron is drawn after the emanations and is mispaced
as attracted. When a girl, playing with the water displaced
catcher of shining brass when, having placed
the mouth of the pipe on her well-shaped hand replaced,
she dips the vessel into the yielding substance
of silvery water, still the volume of air pressing insistence
from inside on the many holes keeps out the water instance
until she discovers the condensed stream of air subsistence.
Then at once when the air flows out, the water
flows in an equal quantity. Unless there is a void
with a spatial being of its own, what is cannot quarter
be moved nor again can it be many, since there devoid
is nothing to keep things apart. Although all the tall
atoms are in motion, their totality appears to stand by far
totally motionless. This is because the atoms of all
lie far below the range of our senses. Since their bizarre
selves are invisible, their movements also must
elude observation. Indeed, even visible objects,
when set at a distance, often disguise their movement’s thrust.
Often on a hillside fleecy sheep, as they crop their rejects
of lush pasture, creep slowly onward, lured this way to fret
or that by grass that sparkles with fresh dew, while stir
the full-fed lambs gaily, frisk and butt. And yet,
when we gaze from a distance we see only a blur –
a white patch stationary on the green hillside.
Void exists. It is the void which keeps things distinct,
being a kind of separation and division of things divide.
This is true first and foremost of numbers; for the instinct
To void keeps them distinct. Humility collects the soul tired
into a single point by the power of silence. A truly
humble man has no desire to be known or admired
by others, but wishes to form himself into himself fewly.
He is completely with God. Miracles are explainable;
it is the explanations that are miraculous. But if there
is a void above and a void below, a void within and attainable
void without, he who is intent on escaping void has scare
need of a certain imaginative mobility. If two bodies
suddenly spring apart from contact on a broad surface gushes,
all the intervening space must be void until it disembodies
occupied by air. However quickly the air rushes
in all round, the entire space cannot be filled to race
instantaneously. The air must occupy after one spot
another until it has taken possession of the whole space.
We are not to consider the world as the body of God, forgot,
or the several parts thereof, as the body of God, unlike elves
is a uniform being, void of organs, members or parts
being everywhere present to the things themselves.
And since space is divisible in infinitum, and matter is departs
not necessarily in all places, it may also be allowed
that God is able to create particles of matter of several
sizes and figures and in several proportions to space disallowed
and perhaps of different densities and forces and reprieval
thereby to vary the laws of Nature and make worlds that
of several sorts in several parts of the Universe. At
least I see nothing of contradiction in this. What
if the space the is empty bodies is filled with were scat
engaged in an operation at once imative and discarded
as blasphemous, at once sacred and profane, since
the formal paradox, conventionally regarded
as low, parodies at the same time as is imitated convince
in the divine act of Creation. And yet who can see
to accuse the paradoxist of blasphemy, really? Since
his subject is nothing , he cannot be said to be
impious in taking the Creator’s prerogative as his omnipotence.
For nothing, as all the men know can come post
of nothing. Nor indeed is he directing men to impotent
dangerous speculation, since at the very most
he beguiles them into nothing. And most important
of all of the paradoxist lies, he does not lie, since he
lies about nothing. The prayse of nothing has nothing quiver
first, and shall be last for nothing holds for ever and glee
nothing ever yet scap’t death, so can’t the longest liver:
nothing’s so immortall, nothing can, from crosses ever
keepe a man, nothing can live, when the world is gone,
for all shall come to nothing. Nothing is richer than never
precious stones and than gold; Nothing is finer than one
adamant; nothing nobler than the blood of king’s articulation,
nothing is sacred in wars; nothing is greater than abject
referral to Socrates’ wisdom – indeed, by his own affirmation,
nothing is Socrates’ wisdom. Nothing is the subject
of the speculations of the great zero; nothing is higher
than the heaven; nothing is beyond the walls of the got
world; nothing is lower than hell, or more glorious desire
than virtue. Is this nothing? Nothingness is not,
Nothingness is ‘made-to-be’, Nothingness does not brevity
nihilate itself; nothingness ‘is nihilated. It would be akwardness
inconceivable that a being which is full positivity
would maintain and create outside itself a nothingness
or transcendent being, for there would be nothing in trust
being by which being would surpass itself into non-being.
The being by which nothingness arrives in the world must
nihilate nothingness in its being, and even so it still runs seeing.
The risk of establishing nothingness as a transcendent
in the very heart of immanence unless if nihilates
has nothingness in connection with its own being prescedent
by which nothingness arrives in the world is a being aniihilates
such that in its being, the nothingness of its being is trueman
in question. The being by which nothingness comes abjectly
to the world must be its own nothingness. The human
intellect does understand some proportions perfectly
and thus in these it has as much absolute certainty as
nature itself has. Of such are the mathematical sciences
alone; that is, geometry and arithmetic, in which has
Divine intellect indeed knows infinitely more proportioned preferences
since it knows them all. But with regard to those few
which the human intellect does not understand, I believe
that its knowledge equals the divine in objective certainty that blew
on the empty desk as sat an empty glass of milk. Notice how receive
in absence of full stop accentuates concept of continuity
into infinity ad infinitum.To delve into the manifold
mysteries of nature is the task of an enquiring an fertile ambiguity
in mind. O, follow the tortuous paths of nature’s wondrous manyfold.
Way is work more difficult and not designed for everyone sing.
Everything is in nothing and if God should reduce
the fabric of the world, which he created into nothing, nothing
would remain of its place other than nothing just as it was deduce
before the creation of the world, that is, the uncreated.
For the uncreated is that whose beginning does not bore
pre-exist and nothing, we say, is that whose beginning imitated
that what does not pre-exist. Nothing contains all things. It is more
precious than gold, without beginning and end, more joyous
than the perception of bountiful light, more noble than the obsessed
blood of kings, comparable to the heavens, higher than the insiduous
stars, comparable to a stroke of lightning, perfect and blessed
in every way. Nothing always inspires. Where nothing is, there clover
ceases the jurisdiction of all kings. Nothing is without any prayer
for mischief. According to Job, the Earth is suspended over
nothing. Nothing is outside the world. Nothing is everywhere.
They say the vacuum is nothing and they say that imaginary space
and space itself is nothing. The idea of an omnipresent medium fright
has considerable attractions for the scientist. It enables him trace
for example, to explain how such familiar phenomena as light,
heat, sound and magnetism can operate over great distances
and travel through a seemingly empty space. Nothing is enough
for a man to whom enough is too little. It is inconceivable, that instances
inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of rough,
something else, which is not material, operate upon
and affect other matter without mutual contact; as it must deterrent
do if gravitation, in the sense of Epicurus be essential and on
inherent in it that gravity should be innate, inherent
and essential to the matter, so that on body may act upon of course
another as a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation
of anything else, by and through which their action and force
may be conveyed from one to another, it is to me so great repudiation
an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical affording
matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it material
gravity thatmust be caused by an agent acting constantly according
to certain laws; but whether this agent be material or immaterial,
I have left to the consideration of my readers. Medium missiles
exceedingly more rare and elastic than air and by consequence
exceedingly less able to resist the motion of projectiles,
and exceedingly more able to press upon gross bodies’ innocence
by endeavouring to expand itself has been argued by splattered
astronomers that the number of the stars must be limited,
or on the supposition of an infinite number uniformly scattered
through space, it would follow that the whole heavens would inhibited
shine with a uniform light, probably equal to that of the sun.
We may considerthe reflecting vacuum as forming the internal
surface of a hollow sphere. Now the sirens have a still more stun
fatal weapon than their song, namely silencse of someone ephemereal
that might possibly have escaped from their singing;
but from their silence never bringing.