What came first: the chicken or the egg?
Forget the chicken and the egg. Both are somethings. How do somethings come from nothing at all?!
To formularise something we should account for nothing. However, one may suppose, as Parmenides did, that even to describe nothingĀ (e.g. in notions such as emptiness, vacuity, and possible worlds) is to declare somethingĀ about existence (i.e. somethingness).
While Parmenides et al considered it self-defeating to talk of nothing, Greek āatomistsā, such as Democritus, in contrast, welcomed talk of the void. In fact, they claimed there are āonly atoms and the voidā, whereby atoms are compositions of the void itself, ruled by ideal laws. In this ontology the void isĀ (existent). But, then, arenāt we back at the start?
Alain Badiou used Platoās dream metaphor to claim something is logically tied to nothing without claiming there isĀ a void (the void is not). Dreams are constructed in sleep. Sleep stops; the dream stops. But no matter how closely we look at dreamsā narratives we see multiplicity: an enormous story which actually growsĀ in size the more we inspect its origins, without limits.
HowĀ are dreams (something) ontologically grounded in sleep (nothing)? Using set theory, Badiou explains how events are sutured to themselvesĀ under one narrative.
As soon as we grasp the entirety of the dream in a thinkable, ontological structure, the connection to sleep is shattered by discursive, wakeful thought.
In this way nothingĀ always mediates a situation, ensuring events are consistent with themselves and traces to it are erased in presentation. Nothing is not: a non-being which sits below what is presented under an āungraspable horizonāāa total, unprovable absence which is always necessary to avoid a āchicken or the eggā situation about existence.
āThe absolutely primary theme of ontology is the void . . . [What presents] in-consists with nothing without any foundational stopping point.ā
Is this mathematical magic?
