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 nothing (e.g. in notions such as emptiness, vacuity, and possible worlds) is to declare something about existence (i.e. somethingness).
While Parmenides et al considered it self-defeating to talk of nothing, Greek âatomistsâ, such as Democritus, in contrast, welcomed talk of the void. In fact, they claimed there are âonly atoms and the voidâ, whereby atoms are compositions of the void itself, ruled by ideal laws. In this ontology the void is (existent). But, then, arenât we back at the start?
Alain Badiou used Platoâs dream metaphor to claim something is logically tied to nothing without claiming there is a void (the void is not). Dreams are constructed in sleep. Sleep stops; the dream stops. But no matter how closely we look at dreamsâ narratives we see multiplicity: an enormous story which actually grows in size the more we inspect its origins, without limits.
How are dreams (something) ontologically grounded in sleep (nothing)? Using set theory, Badiou explains how events are sutured to themselves 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 nothing 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 âungraspable horizonââa total, unprovable absence which is always necessary to avoid a âchicken or the eggâ situation about existence.
âThe absolutely primary theme of ontology is the void . . . [What presents] in-consists with nothing without any foundational stopping point.â
Is this mathematical magic?
