The 4 fundamental meanings of “nothing” in science

[C C]

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/...s-nothing/

KEY TAKEAWAYS: Most of us, when we talk about nothing, refer to a state where the thing we're referring to doesn't yet exist. But absolute nothingness, where space, time, and/or the laws of physics don't exist, is only a philosophical construct, without physical meaning. Does the Universe truly create something from nothing? That depends on what your definition of nothing is, and which of the four definitions you're using. (MORE - details)

COVERED:

1.) A condition where the raw ingredients to create your “something” didn’t exist.

2.) Nothingness is the void of empty space.

3.) Nothingness as the ideal lowest-energy state possible for spacetime.

4.) Nothingness only occurs when you remove the entire Universe and the laws that govern it.

[Magical Realist]

Most nothingnesses as I think of them are states relative to something that exists. Nothingness rides piggyback on Being, arising as only a negative within such. If there were no Being, there'd be no nothingness either. That's a really hard state to imagine. Perhaps it is the primal state of pure and absolute energy, of possibility and potential fizzing up as quantum fluctuations. Is that not where our own minds perch, on the verge between being and nothingness as a pure dynamic state of endless becoming and ceasing to be? We are part of the omnipresent emergent magic that binds together being and non-being.

[Yazata]

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/...s-nothing/

KEY TAKEAWAYS: Most of us, when we talk about nothing, refer to a state where the thing we're referring to doesn't yet exist.

Yes, that's true. When I open a box and say "there's nothing in there", I mean no physical contents of the expected sort. It doesn't mean that air isn't in the box, let alone something more abstract like spatial extension.

But absolute nothingness, where space, time, and/or the laws of physics don't exist, is only a philosophical construct, without physical meaning.

"Matter", "mass", "force", let alone more abstract things like "truth" or "logical implication" are all "philosophical constructs" when we get down to it. Whether or not they have "physical meaning" seems to depend on what the phrase 'physical meaning' means. (Let alone what "meaning" means.)

As much as an astrophysics PhD might feel that he's above all that, he isn't. Physicists are still natural philosophers, even if they don't like to admit it. It's impossible to avoid if we hope to speak intelligently about anything. 

He does have a point though, that when physicists talk about nothing, oftentimes they aren't talking about the nothing that philosophers are talking about when they talk about the metaphysical question of reality appearing ex nihilo, out of nothing -- the question of why reality exists in the first place. The physicists are just talking about a more complex or emergent state arising from a more fundamental state of the sort that they believe in and recognize. They fail to even address the more profound question of why the most fundamental realities that they accept exist at all.

Which raises the inevitable complaint, why do so many physicists (it's always physicists) speak (to laypeople primarily) as if they are addressing the traditional metaphysical question? Why do they pretend that the age old question has been solved, and they are the ones who have solved it? That's something very close to intellectual dishonesty in my opinion.

Does the Universe truly create something from nothing? That depends on what your definition of nothing is, and which of the four definitions you're using. (MORE - details)

COVERED:

1.) A condition where the raw ingredients to create your “something” didn’t exist.

What if your "something" is anything, anything that can truthfully be said to exist? That would seem to exclude the possibility of any kind of raw materials for anything, since the raw materials would be included in the "something".

2.) Nothingness is the void of empty space.

Then why not call it 'vacuum'? Why call it 'nothing'?

3.) Nothingness as the ideal lowest-energy state possible for spacetime.

Which certainly implies that vacuum is not nothing, if spacetime metrics can be applied to it, if it possesses energy states, and if there's something that governs what energy states it can possibly have. It sounds to me like there's a lot of rather complex something there, just that it's more abstract than the matter or particles of a cruder sort of materialism.

4.) Nothingness only occurs when you remove the entire Universe and the laws that govern it.

Yes, that's nothing in the most profound sense.

If physicists want to talk about something else, fine. But they should be careful to explain when they are doing so. They mustn't try to mislead the public.

[Zinjanthropos]

2.) Nothingness is the void of empty space.

I like this only because if something is created from nothing then it probably needs to be somewhere. Question is whether somewhere is something? Can you have something and have nowhere to put it? What came first…something or somewhere to put it?

[Magical Realist]

Nothing is nothing.Which is to say nothing doesn't exist. Which is to say: There is only Being---exuberant, immediately accessible, and infinite. Enjoy..