Nothingness

It has been claimed that the second law means that the universe as a whole must tend inexorably towards a state of maximum entropy. By an analogy with a closed system, the entire universe must eventually end up in a state of equilibrium, with the same temperature everywhere. The stars will run out of fuel. All life will cease. The universe will slowly peter out in a featureless expanse of nothingness. It will suffer a heat death . 

All I remember is turning on the circuit breaker and hearing what I thought was a distant rumble and a slight shaking of everything and then total darkness. . . nothingness. 

A modern alchemy succeeds where the old failed. The ancients of the Middle Ages [sic] were never able to change lead into gold, but the medium of electronics turns magnetized particles (bits) into money-like value. Money seems for a time to be conjured out of nothingness, to be returned to nothingness either quickly or at an indeterminate moment.. . . Nor do we know, at this time, whether people will even want to do—and pay in this manner for— much significant business on the Internet. We don t yet have a do-it-yourself... 

This Creative Force, therefore, really represents a force which LIMITS the possibilities belonging to matter when it finds itself in a state which we would call Matiere vierge. This Virgin Matter is wrongly taken by certain people to represent Nothingness or Chaos. If, however, we chose to regard our solar system from the point of view of the [as-... 

It cannot be that our life is a mere bubble, cast up by eternity to float a moment on its waves and then sink into nothingness. 

Sartre (I943) L Etre elle Ntant, tr. Hazel Barnes, Being and Nothingness. London, pp. 49ff... 

A possible explanation of the all-or-nothingness effect is provided by the theory that the water may be concerned in the initiation of a chain-reaction which, once started, proceeds explosively. Certain exothermic reactions which proceed explosively or not at all are known, and will be dealt with more fully in Chapter VI. 

Naranjo and Ornstein 39 describe the meditative statel 71 of consciousness that can result from concentrative meditation as a discrete state characterized as "voidness," "blankness," or "nothingness." There seems to be a temporary nonfunctioning of all psychological functions, in some sense, difficult to deal with verbally, awareness seems to be maintained, but there is not object of awareness. The appearance of this meditative state seems to be sudden and to clearly represent a quantum leap. The practice of meditation quiets down the various subsystems, but there is a sudden transition to this pattern of voidness. 

States of this type have not been dealt with in western scientific literature to any great extent, but sound similar to Eastern descriptions of consciousness of the void, a d-SoC in which time, space, and ego are supposedly transcended, leaving pure awareness of the primal nothingness from which all manifested creation comes 22, 51. writers who have described in words, so the above description and comparison with William s experience is rough, to say the least. Thus... 

Properly speaking, there is no repose in Nature, (Cosmop. Tract 4). She cannot remain idle and if she should permit real repose to succeed Movement for a single instant, all the machinery of the Universe would fall in ruin. Movement has, we may say, drawn it from nothingness repose would replunge it into nothingness. That to which we give the name repose, is only Movement less rapid, less sensible. Movement is then continual in each part as in the whole. Nature acts always in the interior of the Mixts. Even corpses are not in repose, since they are corrupted, and since corruption cannot take place without Movement. 

God spoke, light was made it departed from its limb, and was placed in the most elevated region. Then the shadows disappeared before it chaos and confusion gave place to order, night to day, and, to speak thus, nothingness to existence. 

The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness. 

A century before Punk emerged as rebel youth subculture, the word itself meant something else. It denoted something worthless, foolish, rubbish, empty talk, nonsense such that Carlyle could speak of phosphorescent punk and nothingness . Punk was something evanescent, blazing intensely for a moment in the dark. When it came to future dreams for colour schemes,... 

Such volumes of nothingness must be present to account for the large increase in volume upon fusion while at the same time the intemuclear distance decreases (see Tables 5.9 and 5.10). 

One of the most profound aspects of ancient matter theory was its connection to creation stories. Almost all ancient societies share a common bond in explaining the origins of the universe as a story about the creation of matter from nothingness. There are usually three (water, land, and air) or four elements (water, land, air, and fire) in the first instance of creation. For example, in the Hopi tradition, Taiowa, the Creator, existed in the infinite. The infinite had no shape, time, or life except the mind of the creator. Taiowa created Sotuknang and directed Sotuknang to make from the endless space nine solid worlds. Into these worlds were added water and air. Once these were created, life could be made. 

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