16 Oct 2005
Imagining nothing
I started reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything today, and before I'd got thirty pages in, I was distracted by a thought (which is why it sometimes takes me a long time to get through books). The passage I was reading was about the Big Bang, and how time and space begin at that precise moment:
It is natural but wrong to visualize the singularity as a kind of pregnant dot hanging in a dark, boundless void. But there is no space, no darkness. The singularity has no around around it. There is no space for it to occupy, no place for it to be. We can't even ask how long it has been there---whether it has just lately popped into being, like a good idea, or whether it has been there for ever, quietly awaiting the right moment. Time doesn't exist. There is no past from it to emerge from. (p. 28)
Now, this isn't a new idea to me, and I can see the logic to it perfectly well; time and space were created in the Big Bang, so neither could have existed before the Big Bang and it came---literally---out of nothing. Fine. Only it isn't fine. When I try to imagine nothingness, my brain sneaks in some container for the nothingness, or some frame of reference. When I try to insist that it really is nothing---not just an absence of something filling something else, my brain whimpers and tries to hide. I assume that I'm not the only one, so why do we find it so hard to imagine true nothingness? Our brains just don't seem to be able to cope with the concept.
Science has pushed back the boundaries of what we have to try to imagine and visualise, so perhaps this is a temporary deficiency, and we'll eventually be able to do it. I'd be interested to hear from physicists, mathematicians and cosmologists and see how you cope with imagining the unimaginable. I wonder if this inability is behind some of our spiritual beliefs? If you can't imagine nothingness after death, you create a container---heaven or hell.
By a huge coincidence, I spotted a highly relevant sight gag in the episode of Futurama I watched today on DVD. The planet Eternium (Nibbler's homeworld) is shown from space, with the caption, "Inconceivable Dimensions Not Shown".
2
Has anyone got today's 'Daily Mail'? There's a quote from Richard and Judie's interview with Stephen Hawking regarding this very topic in the 'Quotes of the week' section. I actually read it and thought "Wow, that's clever" - but can't recall it with *good enough* accuracy now! The paper was at my in-laws - I was idly thumbing through it. I *really* need to improve my powers of recall... :o)3
It was something along the lines of it being pointless to contemplate what happened before the big bang, because it didn't.by Jonathan Briggs @ 16/10/2005 10:11 pm • Permalink
4
The way that be spoken of is not the constant way. Then again maybe is like incompleteness. After all how can a member of a system of rules, encompass some thing outside that system with the same rules? Maybe only by becoming a member of the other set.by Nicholas Lee @ 17/10/2005 7:10 am • Permalink
5
Yes, it's difficult. And it's not the only thing in physics you have to accept without being able to imagine it. I only cope by not thinking too much of them. Just accept the fact and move on. Excellent book, by the way. Incomplete and with a few inaccuracies, but very interesting.6
Found a quote over at [this article](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/13/nhawk13.xml) in the Telegraph: Richard Madeley asked: > "I suppose that one of the ultimate questions that non-scientists are desperate for an answer to is: what existed before the Big Bang?" > "Asking what is before the Big Bang is like asking what is north of the North Pole. It is a meaningless question," came the electronically generated reply. > "Ha ha ha," went Richard. "Well, I've asked a few of those in my time!" ...7
Clearly, I can't even be trusted to do linkies properly...8
Hey bsag May I use this hallowed ground to ask if there's a way to make an .avi file available for viewing/listening to on the interwebnet thingy? [Bruvâs first gig](http://www.aprosexic.com/2005/10/i-saw-yer.html) pix also have a one-track .avi recorded on the same digital still camera and I'd just be interested to know if it's shareable? I thang yew.9
Jonathan Briggs: Yes, I was thinking of the address business too. And I do think that's why people like to think about someone/thing being in control. Jonathan Drummey: I like that! Kev: That's such a Richard thing to say. I can just imagine his expression. What the heck was Stephen Hawking doing on Richard and Judy, though? That's *really* hard to imagine. Timtom: Interesting. I don't think I'd be able to cope without being able to imagine what I was working on, but perhaps I'm just too literal-minded. I'm really enjoying the book so far, slightly to my surprise, actually. Mr. D: I fixed your link
If you want to show it on your Blogger blog, you'll need to upload the file to some webspace somewhere. It doesn't need to be on the same server as your blog (I don't know if they give you anywhere to upload files), but it needs to be publicly accessible. Perhaps you have some webspace provided by your ISP? Then just insert a link in your blog with the full path the the file, ending in "/filename.avi". Then when people click the link, it should be handled by one of their browser's plugins.
10
Contemplating oblivion, I have long thought, to be impossible. I've tried for over a decade. I can't do it.11
It is in the nature of man to refuse to contemplate oblivion, lest he get a glimps of his own mortality. Few contemplate their own deaths with true equanimity, resignation perhaps; there is after all an inevitability about it. I am in two minds as to whether I should "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" as advised by Dylan Thomas, or to "Sleep perchance to dream", I just hope I get it right when the time comes. Of course, should I step out in front of three buses (You wait a lifetime, then three come at once) I may have little choice in the manner in which I shuffle off this mortal coil!by Jonathan Briggs @ 17/10/2005 10:11 pm • Permalink
12
Apologies, I left the "e" off the end of "glimpse" and unable to return and edit my own mistakes. I may consult the dictionary to find that a glmps is an Old English word for an obscure breed of sheep. When contemplating "Buses" I wondered if it should have a double "S", on checking, I found that it would have been acceptable, though not common; but had The Bard read it, he may have wondered exactly where the Kisses came in!by Jonathan Briggs @ 17/10/2005 10:11 pm • Permalink
13
Thanks for the fix and the tip, bsag Will give it a go...14
wow I'm lost...thing I'll carry on watching my bob the builder video.15
Looking back, I recall that "Imagining nothing" came very easily to me, especially when sitting my "A" Level maths paper some 42 years ago!by Jonathan Briggs @ 18/10/2005 6:10 pm • Permalink
16
My feeling is that we don't have the wiring in our brains to intuitively grasp concepts such as what existed before time, or what other dimensions look like. The best we can do is to try to fit them into stuff we can relate to by analogy, or to manipulate ideas using systems such as mathematics. When you think about it even being able to use the concepts such as numbers is pretty remarkable. Not bad really for something that was primarily evolved to keep us fed, and one step ahead of predators.by Keith @ 19/10/2005 6:11 pm • Permalink
17
You can't imagine nothing, just like you can't shout silence. Imagining is an action that requires a subject, a something to be imagined. And as soon as something, anything, is involved, hey presto: there's goes the nothing.18
There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry. Martin Gardnerby pitix @ 28/10/2005 11:11 am • Permalink
19
From "100 Years of Quantum Mysteries", Scientific American, February 2001, by Max Tegmark and John Archibald Wheeler:" ... Theories can be crudely organized in a family tree where each might, at least in principle, be derived from more fundamental ones above it. Almost at the top of the tree lie general relativity and quantum field theory. The first level of descendents includes special relativity and quantum mechanics, which in turn spawn electromagnetism, classical mechanics, atomic physics, and so on. Disciplines such as computer science, psychology and medicine appear far down in the lineage. "All these theories have two components: mathematical equations and words that explain how the equations are connected to what is observed in experiments. ... Crudely speaking, the ratio of equations to words decreases as one moves down the tree, dropping near zero for very applied fields such as medicine and sociology. In contrast, theories near the top are highly mathematical, and physicists are still struggling to comprehend the concepts that are encoded in the mathematics. "The ultimate goal of physics is to find what is jocularly referred to as a theory of everything, from which all else can be derived. ... "A theory of everything would probably have to contain no concepts at all."
by Mark Zimmermann @ 10/11/2005 11:12 pm • Permalink
20
"time and space were created in the Big Bang, so neither could have existed before the Big Bang" says who? the one that doesn't see beyond? what if there was time in another universe? "and it cameâliterallyâout of nothing." totally unlogical for me, more logical would be it came from another dimension, it came from smaller particles than quarks, or for the religious believers god put that little universe in that place, even that would be more logical. some scientists simply are enough arrogant to go even further than the theories(!) they calculate on their small papers or pc's by the way it's a little clumsy to imagine something that isn't anything and therefore isn't anywhere. but that's us humans, we want to know it all until we realize it doesn't do us too good "Science has pushed back the boundaries of what we have to try to imagine and visualise" because they couldn't come up with something better, in 200 years they all might be proven very wrong. hawking is a good example how you can persist and yet be wrong. "I wonder if this inability is behind some of our spiritual beliefs? If you canât imagine nothingness after death, you create a containerâheaven or hell" i think your wonder is wrong. i cannot imagine nothingness, yet i believe i probably won't exist anymore after life/death. the fanciest how i ever imagined nothingness in my mind was a black canvas. heaven and hell have different origins, i claim that it's easy to guess this reading enough about the creation of christianity or other religions. "It was something along the lines of it being pointless to contemplate what happened before the big bang, because it didnât." how would you - you little sand corn - know? (i'm a little sand corn too heeeeeey!) -----by siegfried @ 07/02/2006 7:03 pm • Permalink
1
At last, a fellow traveller on the road from nowhere. That there is nothing containing the nothingness, a logical inconsistancy if ever I heard one. Everything we know is within something else our country in the world, the world in the Solar System, the Solar System in the Galaxy, a bit like the silly addresses we used to write as children.......... England, The World, The Universe etc. Do you wonder that people believe in a "Being", an Entity in some sort of control.----- There's a Zen koan that asks the question "What was your original face?" In other words, what was your face before you were born? I think the question is pointing at the same bit of nothingness that you were talking about.by jonathan drummey @ 16/10/2005 6:10 pm • Permalink