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An entertaining history of the idea of nothing - including absences, omissions, and shadows - from the Ancient Greeks through the 20th century How can nothing cause something? The absence of something might seem to indicate a null or a void, an emptiness as ineffectual as a shadow. In fact, 'nothing' is one of the most powerful ideas the human mind has ever conceived. This short and entertaining book by Roy Sorensen is a lively tour of the history and philosophy of nothing, explaining how various thinkers throughout history have conceived and grappled with the mysterious power of absence -- and how these ideas about shadows, gaps, and holes have in turned played a very positive role in the development of some of humankind's most important ideas. Filled with Sorensen's characteristically entertaining mix of anecdotes, puzzles, curiosities, and philosophical speculation, the book is ordered chronologically, starting with the Taoists, the Buddhists, and the ancient Greeks, moving forward to the middle ages and the early modern period, then up to the existentialists and present day philosophy. The result is a diverting tour through the history of human thought as seen from a novel and unusual perspective.
List of contents
- Introduction
- Nothing Represented
- 1 The Makapansgat Hominid: Pictorial Absence
- 2 Hermetes Trismegistus: Discursive Absence
- Relative Nothing
- 3 Lao Tzu: Absence of Action
- 4 Buddha: Absence of Wholes
- 5 Nagarjuna: Absence of Ground
- Absolute Nothing
- 6 Parmenides: Absence of Absence
- 7 Anaxagoras: Absence of Total Absences
- 8 Leucippus: Local Absolute Absences
- Potential Nothing
- 9 Plato: Shades of Absence
- 10 Aristotle: Potential Absence meets Absence of Potential
- 11 Lucretius: Your Future Infinite Absence
- Divine Nothing
- 12 Saint Katherine of Alexandria: Absence of Non-existent Women Philosophers
- 13 Augustine: The Evil of Absence is an Absence of Evil
- 14 Fridugisus: Synesthesia and Absences
- 15 Maimonides: The Divination of Absence
- Scientific Nothing
- 16 Bradwardine: Absence of Determination
- 17 Newton: A Safe Space for Absence
- 18 Leibniz: Absence of Contradiction
- Secular Nothing
- 19 Schopenhauer: Absence of Meaning
- 20 Bergson: The Evolution Absence
- 21 Sartre: Absence Perceived
- 22 Bertrand Russell: Absence of Referents
- References
Report
Sorensen (Univ. of Texas at Austin; frequent visiting professor, St. Andrew's Univ., Scotland) has written a book that seeks above all to be comprehensive both geographically and chronologically. Spanning the ancient Greeks to today and traversing multiple cultures and thus multiple faith traditions, Nothing leaves no stone unturned in this survey of nonbeing. The text is not only informative but also entertaining; Sorensen's analysis is quite quippy at times...this book will provide a broad understanding of the meaning of absence. Choice
