Is nothing something?

The point of nothing - to paraphrase Bertrand Russell on philosophy - is to start with something so simple as to seem not worth examining, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

There is more to nothing than meets the eye. What I want to do, with those who want to contribute here, is to try to discover what it is all about, while showing that thinking about nothing means thinking about everything. History, philosophy, religion, art, literature, politics, science - all are touched by nothing. Who could have believed that nothing would turn out to be so interesting, so laden with intrigue, mystery and hidden information?

There is nothing frivolous about nothing; it is pivotal in many subjects and has been examined with various degrees of respect and wonder through the ages. Theologians had been disturbed by it and worried about the concept of creating something out of nothing. It was a difficult topic for Greek philosophers, Medieval and Late Ancient thinkers and for mathematicians. Far from being nothing to worry about, it was a concept that threatened the foundation of what people held dear. The Greeks were scared of it and Aristotle wouldn’t permit it, so that due to the Catholic Church’s embrace of Aristotelianism, Western science and mathematics were held back for centuries.

What is this nothing, that we can’t actually see, touch or feel? Is it absolute? Is it relative to everything else? If we are able to think about it, is it something, and if so wouldn’t it not be nothing?

This is precisely the mystery of nothing – that the more we think about it, the more there is to it.

So is nothing something?