Fundamental integrative role of nothing -- the ultimate remainder ?

Reintegration of a Remaindered World (Part #8)

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In a period when many are faced with a condition in which nothing remains of their hard-earned savings, or nothing remains of their aspirations in life, the nature of the "nothing" -- with which people are expected to survive (and thrive) in their remaindered condition -- merits radical rethinking.

In a context of competing perspectives striving to cancel each other out -- as in the strategic arena of global initiatives of questionable scope -- there is a strong case for reflecting on "nothing" as a mysterious "remainder" associated with the formulation of these initiatives.

At the time of writing, a particular focus on "nothing" is provided by a special issue of the New Scientist (Nothing: the intangible idea that rules the cosmos, 19-23 November 2011), introduced by theoretical physicist Brian Greene (Nothingness: Why nothing matters). For Greene:

Shakespeare had it right, even in ways he couldn't have imagined. For centuries, scientists have indeed been making much ado about nothing -- and with good reason. Nothing, or rather what we've long taken to be nothing, may be the key to understanding everything from why particles have mass to the expansion of the universe... nothing is a rich and subtle subject whose biography is far from finished.... Since the time of Newton, we have thus gradually realised that nature has masked the identity of nothing with a Shakespearian deftness. With the relentless rise of science, we have slowly peeled back the obscuring layers, revealing vital intangibles at the very heart of reality, a grand triumph for nothing. [emphasis added]

For physicists, the global strategic implications of these insights are necessarily irrelevant and meaningless, as remarkably demonstrated by the notorious Sokal Affair. However, given the arguments for "technomimicry" developed elsewhere (Technomimicry as analogous to biomimicry, 2011), if physics and technology can be "allowed" and "encouraged" by society to articulate extraordinarily counterintuitive insights, there is a case for exploring the implications of such thinking as a template of relevance to other domains -- if only as a "technomnemonic" source of fruitful metaphor.

Zero: Especially valuable for the above argument regarding the subtle nature of "remainder" is the explication in that issue of the progressive emergence of zero, as articulated by Robert Webb (Zero, the number they tried to ban, New Scientist, 19-24 November 2011). He notes:

• early Christian religious rejection of its implication of a "godless" central void.
  • This merits reflection to the extent that the preoccupation of the argument here would be condemned for similar reasons
• Hindu insight in AD 624, due to astronomer Brahmagupta, into the possibility of negative numbers, enabling a continuous range between positive and negative -- through sunya, namely nothingness -- leading to a new way of doing mathematics (including the handling of debt).
  • In many forms of current debate, it is however appropriate to note the extent to which the "negative" is systematically condemned, as highlighted by Barbara Ehrenreich (Smile Or Die: how positive thinking fooled America and the world, 2010).
• although finally appreciated in Europe in 1202, the use of zero was  banned in 1299 by the authorities of the city of Florence on the grounds that the new ability to inflate a number's value hugely, by simply adding a zero to the end, was an invitation to fraud.
  • Analogous concerns might now be expressed with regard to the circulation of trillions of dollars of public debt in the global financial system -- essentially based on nothing and created artificially out of nothing, as with the process of quantitative easing (From Quantitative Easing (QE) to Moral Easing (ME), 2010). Curiously the process  nevertheless leaves many with nothing and with little recognition of any impropriety -- hence the merit of the arguments of Stéphane Hessel (Time for Outrage! 2011)
• use of zero as a number was subsequently a victim of religious debate regarding the orthodoxy of the void, and its implication in contested belief in heliocentric movement of the planets
  • Is it conceivable that many current challenges of governance derive from what corresponds conceptually to the zero-less number notation system used in the Roman Empire -- possibly contributing to its collapse through the difficulty of managing funds?
• the development in 1637 of Cartesian coordinates, as a marriage of algebra and geometry, placed zero at the "unmoving centre" of the coordinate system
  • Is it conceivable that an analogue to "zero" could emerge at the "origin" of a future coordinate system, as implied separately (Spherical Accounting: Using geometry to embody developmental integrity, 2004; Spherical Configuration of Categories to Reflect Systemic Patterns of Environmental Checks and Balances, 1994)?
• calculus  then showed how zero merged into the infinitesimally small to explain how anything could change its position -- zero becoming a form of prime mover
  • Does this point to a future possible role for "zero" in the psychosocial system?
    

It might then be asked whether Webb's concluding bemusement as to how a number could have caused so much confusion and distress over centuries could be of relevance to the concern here with the subtle significance and nature of "remainder" and with those left with "nothing". Also of relevance is the sense in which people, notably so-called "losers", may be described as "zeros" -- a comment related to their assessment as "nobodies".

Nothing: The issue includes a summary by Ian Stewart (Counting starts with an empty set, New Scientist, 19-24 November 2011). He notes:

• the mathematicians' version of nothing is the empty set as a vital building block for the whole of mathematics
• the challenge has been to understand numbers themselves, for example what is the nature of what is common to two of anything
• the concluding insight emerged from mathematical logic and Fourier analysis, leading to the definition of 1 as being the set whose only member is the empty set, namely nothing. The print edition of Stewart's article is appropriately titled Nothing in Common.
  

In noting that the whole sequence of numbers "tracks back" to the empty set, Stewart concludes:

The building materials here are abstractions: the empty set and the act of forming a set by listing its members.... Once you've defined the positive whole numbers, similar set-theoretic trickery defines negative numbers, fractions, real numbers (infinite decimals), complex numbers... all the way to the latest fancy concept in quantum theory or whatever. So now you know the dreadful secret of mathematics: it's all based on nothing. [emphasis added]

It is well-recognized that the empty set is not the same thing as nothing; rather, it is a set with nothing inside it and a set is always something. The paradoxical aspects of this continue to be a focus of philosophical comment.

As with Webb's insights, it might then be asked whether insights of analogous significance could be constructed from the nothingness explored here -- notably for the remaindered left with "nothing". What are they then able to do? Does everything "track back" to nothing in a sense that has not been well understood or appropriately appreciated? Might it be said that other forms of "set-thoretic trickery" have been practiced on the unsuspecting?

Holes: In a third article in the special issue, the role of nothing at the heart of electronics is described by Richard Webb (Computers are powered by holes, New Scientist, 19-24 November 2011). With respect to understanding of the operation of the transistor, he notes:

• the curious entity which had originally seemed to control the workings of the transistor had eluded everyone -- because it was not there
• semiconductors -- the key to transistor operation -- sometimes let a current pass and sometimes block its passage
• understanding was achieved by recognition of what were initially described as mobile "absences of an electron" -- acting like positive charges and moving the wrong way on a magnetic field, subsequently to be caricatured as "holes"
• it was the "presence of an absence" of electrons that resulted in the unique behaviour, it what was named named a p-n junction owing to its two distinct areas of positive and negative charge carriers
• the breakthrough came from the recognition that the "hole" was real, not just the "absence of something" but a true "nothing-that-is", with an independent existence -- capable of coexisting with electrons -- then named as the p-n-p transistor

As Webb concludes: the hole went from strength to strength, now to be found at the heart of every computer chip:

Modern life has become unimaginable without this curiosity whose nature took two decades to reveal: the nothing that become something and changed the world.

Again, what fruitful insights into psychosocial organization might be possible through recognition of a "hole" that was real, not just the "absence of something" but a true "nothing-that-is", with an independent existence. How would this enable fruitful relationships between "positive" and "negative" -- perhaps opening up a new mode of communication through psychosocial "transistors", yet to be discovered? Aspects of this possibility have been explored by Ron Atkin (Multidimensional Man; can man live in 3-dimensional space?, 1981).

Emptiness: A fourth contribution focuses on the nature of the vacuum of empty space. Paul Davies (The turbulent life of empty space, New Scientist, 19-24 November 2011) notes:

• empty space is richer than a mere absence of things -- and it plays an indispensable part in much of modern physics
• the question raised was the mystery of how one charge feels the pull of another, namely how two magnets sense each other's presence
• although the region of space pervaded by an electric or magnetic field can be said to be not empty, the will-o'-the-wisp "stuff" it contains is a far cry from what is normally considered to be matter; fields might possess energy and exert pressure, but they are not made up of anything more substantial
• the modern conception of the vacuum is one of a seething ferment of quantum-field activity, with waves surging randomly this way and that; what one gets is is a picture of the vacuum that is reminiscent in some respects of the classical ether -- filling all space and having measurable physical properties such as energy density and pressure
• the notion that space is a mere void with no physical properties is no longer tenable
• the remaining mystery is how dark energy works -- with the ultimate fate of the universe intimately linked to the properties of the vacuum
  

The comments by May (above) indicated the degree of current recognition of the special function of emptiness by the various arts. Extreme importance is attached to this in certain spiritual traditions, as noted below. The question is the nature of the further possibilities in the light of mode of thinking by which physics has been empowered.

Philosophy of nothingness: There is an extensive philosophical literature on nothingness, for example:

• James Heisig, Philosophers of Nothingness: an essay on the Kyoto School (2002)
• Roger-Pol Droit. The Cult of Nothingness: the philosophers and the Buddha (2007)
• Christopher Loots, The Ma (...) of Hemingway: interval, absence, and Japanese esthetics in our time. Hemingway Review, Spring 2010, 29, 2, pp. 74-88
• Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness (1983)
• Kitaro Nishida, Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview (1993)
• Brian Schroder, Dancing through Nothing: Nietsche, the Kyoto School, and Transcendence. Journal of Nietsche Studies, April 2009, 27, pp. 44-65
• Rob Cook, Nothing is Real: Toward a Sunyata/Pleroma Dialectic, Religion East and West, October 2006, 6, pp. 1-20
• Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943).

The embodiment of "nothing" in form ("mattering") and in process ("happening") is explored separately as "importing" "nothingness" or "emptiness" through recognizing and enactivating patterns of associations (Import of Nothingness and Emptiness through Happening and Mattering, 2008). The terms in the title are ambiguously interpreted with respect to the transformation of "nothingness" into "somethingness", in the sense that each has both a tangible and an intangible sense, pertaining to matter (form) and to significance. The question was considered under the following headings:

• Varieties of nothingness and emptiness
• Questionable understanding of emptiness and nothingness
• "Mattering" and "Happening"
• "Nothing" emerging through combinations of "mattering" and "happening"
• Dynamic complexification: integration of "no time"
• Emergence of "nothing": creating "cognitive shelters" and "cognitive vehicles"
• Emergence of "nothing": globalization as exemplar
• Emergence of "nothing": "import" of significance
• Polarization and the dynamics of nothingness

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