Nothing (General)

by David Turell , Friday, November 27, 2009, 20:49 (5473 days ago) @ George Jelliss

Here are some quotes from Stenger to clarify his views about "nothing". 
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> First it is necessary to clarify what he means by "unphysical region". He begins with an account of quantum tunneling by which a physical particle can pass through a potential barrier he says: "inside the barrier the momentum of the particle is an imaginary number, that is, has a negative square root and so is "unphysical", meaning unmeasurable. There is a certain probability that the particle will penetrate the barrier.
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> He then applies this to the origin of the universe, citing the work of James Hartle and Stephen Hawking and later Alexander Vilenkin. According to Vilenkin's version he writes: "our universe simply tunnels its way out of chaos". For fuller details see his Philo article. A PDF version can be located on his website: http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/ about two thirds down the page under the heading "A Scenario for a Natural Origin of Our Universe".
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> This is from Quantum Gods page 250:
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> "If we seek out the origin of the word "chaos" we find that it comes from the Greek for "the primal emptiness" or "void". To be "something" requires some structure. Since the unphysical region lacks everything, including structure, it can be identified with "nothing". Now, if you are what in the cyberworld is called a "logic chopper" you will try to argue that having no structure is still a property and anything with a property can't be nothing. Don't bother e-mailing me with such irrelevant word-play. The unphysical region is as nothing as anything can be."-Hate to butt in but you are sticking to a one-trick pony:-Re: Nothingness and the rise of something 
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I talked to Vic Stenger about his ideas a while back in an attempt to suggest that he is just reinventing Hegel's Absolute Idea, the spiritual unity that would be prior to the world of forms. George Spencer Brown's Laws of Form gives mathematical model of this idea, a calculus that captures the metaphysical scheme of Taoism, Buddhism, Sufism, etc. Russell praised this calculus highly but failed to see its true meaning. Stenger wouldn't even take an interest, mysticism being axiomatically a load of nonsense. 
Personally, I would say that a rational thinker must find ex nihilo creation a load of nonsense, and that Stenger, Guth and others who favour it are poor metaphysicians. They don't seem to realise that the idea of the origin of the universe as ''nothing spontaneously breaking symmetry to become something' is just mysticism. Except, of course, that it would only appear to by Nothing becoming Something. If this process were any more than an appearance then the ancient paradox that causes normally sensible physicists to consider ex nihilo creation would arise. 
I wish people like Stenger would do some research into these things, then he would not be so casually dismissing the only idea that works.-I can use one trick also.