Much Ado About Nothing

OK, so I have been thinking about what I wanted to write about for my next article and do you know what I came up with?  Nothing.  For a brief instance I was actually upset that I could not come up with an idea for this latest blog article and then I realized that the topic really should be about nothing.  After a cursory examination of the subject matter I was very surprised that “nothing” is actually not very small at all.  Rather it seems “nothing” is a very vast and popular concept.  At that discovery my curiosity got the better of me and I began looking into nothing.  As an aside, I can legitimately tell my wife I am working on nothing and it means I am busy.  Without digressing to far I have discovered that “Nothing” is in every facet of society and is inescapable.  Looking at popular culture, science and religion & philosophy one finds that the most prevalent and strongest idea is nothing.  Therefore I would ascertain that “nothing” is the glue holding the universe together.  To put it another way, the “god particle” that scientists have been looking for everywhere is actually nothing.

Noting In Popular Culture

The first area of society I would like to look at is in popular culture.  It has been a long standing practice to look to the popular culture to find the worldview and beliefs of a society.[i]  When we look into nothing in popular culture we can find it prevalent in television, music and movies.  The most glaringly obvious example of nothing in popular culture can be found in the form of one of the most successful televisions sitcoms ever made, Seinfeld.[ii]  The show was pitched, written, and remained about absolutely nothing.  As a result of this nothingness, the show became one of the most successful television shows in history.  The show went off the air 15 years ago and is still doing well in syndication!

The second area of popular culture we can find nothing in is in music.  No I am not talking about Pink Floyd’s “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict.”[iii] 

No matter how nonsensical that song is it is about something not nothing.  But there are numerous songs that are just called “nothing”[iv] and one even called “The Nothing Song.”[v]  This again reinforces the idea of nothing in popular culture.

The last area to look at nothing in popular culture is in movies.  I shall include plays with this for brevity as well as general lumping screenplays together.  According to IMDB.com there have been three movies simply titled Nothing from 1947 to 2010[vi].  I have nothing to say about them as far as content.  It is interesting however, that there has been even one movie made, let alone three that are called nothing.  Even the infamous bard himself could not resist the lure of nothing.  One of his more famous comedies is called Much Ado About Nothing.[vii]   So we have seen in television, music and in movies and stage the idea of Nothing is very much about something for popular culture.

Noting In Science

The second area I will look at to find nothing is in science.  Nothing can be found in all of the sciences, for our purposes we shall only look at three, Mathematics, Physics and Geography.  In mathematics nothing is a very important concept.  “0” is the mathematical notation for nothing.[viii]  Can you possible image even balancing a checkbook with using a zero?  In more complex equations {} is used for nothing showing that the set is void of value or holds nothing.[ix]  Without nothing the mathematical existence we uphold with not exist.  It is almost as if the existence of nothing keeps nothing from existing.

Noting can be found in physics too.  In astrophysics the idea of nothing is the canvas the universe is painted upon.[x]  Outer Space is made up of a vast emptiness or nothing.  Space is by its very nature, void.   There is an area of study within quantum mechanics trying to show that something can come from nothing.[xi] 

The nothing being the physical representative or reality of the mathematical idea of a null set.  Some scientists have gone as far as stating that mater is nothing more than quantum vacuum fluctuations.[xii]  In other words, reality only exists because there is a fluctuation in the vacuum of nothing. 

In Geography you can find nothing as well.  While some have joked about the State of Iowa be the state of perfect nothingness.[xiii]  I would respectfully purpose that it is not Iowa but rather Nebraska that is the state of nothing.  Having been there I can attest to the fact that there is nothing there.  However, there is still one last bit of interesting scientific evidence of nothing.  Apparently in 2009 two men had a computer write a paper that was about nothing.  This paper is grammatically and scientifically correct but is actually about nothing.  None of the sentences mean anything.  They even managed to get a scientific journal to publish the paper as a legitimate paper!  The men withdrew the paper before it was published but you can read it here.

Noting In Religion & Philosophy

After looking at nothing in popular culture and then science I shall now turn to the last area to look at nothing, religion and philosophy.  Eastern religions are known to aspire to attain balance which cancels out both sides leaving you with nothing. [xiv]   Perhaps one of the most well-known of the eastern religions is Buddhism.  In Buddhism one strives for liberation and a freed mind free from passions whether it is anger, stress etc….  This state that one strives for is called Nirvana.[xv]   Nirvana is a negative state of being in the sense of doing away with and being stripped of.  True Nirvana is being left with nothing.[xvi] 

Even in Christianity there is a branch of thought known as Annihilationism.  In this thought the belief is that after death the unbeliever who is not saved does not go to hell as traditional Christian theology has sustained, but after death the unbeliever is annihilated.  The soul and personhood is completely destroyed as punishment for turning against God.  Annihilationist’s believe that the unbeliever is turned into nothing.

In traditional Judeo-Christian theology nothing is found the beginning.  The creation story found in Genesis believed by both Christian and Jewish thought is that of ex nihilo or creation out of nothing.  In fact on of the evidence of God is that of His power for ex nihilo.  Nothing is the starting point of creation for Judeo-Christian theology.

Philosophy has wrestled with nothing for years.  Perhaps the most known philosophical thought dealing with nothing is that of Nihilism.  Nietzsche is one of the great prophets of Nihilistic thought.  This thought is that of moral nihilism, or amoralism.  Nietzsche contended that there was nothing of intrinsic value or meaning.     This gives birth to moral relativism and ultimately straight up pure hedonism.  Of course this philosophy is not sustainable in living out and in Nietzsche’s case is really a fight against Christianity.

Another philosophical train of thought of nothing in from the existential thinkers like Sartre and Camus.  While this thought is another form of moral nihilism this one is not originating from a antagonistic perspective of Christianity as Nietzsche was.  Nietzsche’s writing seems angry while the existential thinkers have a very sad connotation to them.  Sartre believed that existence was absurd.[xvii]  While he arrived at the same conclusion as his angrier peer about religion, it was not satisfying to him.  Rather the contrary, the existentialists were very upset and depressed about the human condition and the absurdity of existence.  Meaning and thus morality has no meaning and is morally the empty set. 

We have looked at three pillars of society, popular culture; science and religion & philosophy.  After examining these litmus tests for existence we have discovered allot of nothing.  In fact one might go so far as to say that nothingness is everywhere we turn.  In popular culture the thought of nothing is not just entertaining but big business.  In science the idea of nothing is vital the core of all structure without nothing can there be any mathematics, physics or astrophysics?  In religion & philosophy the thought of nothing is so prevalent that it is the beginning and the endpoint of the discussion.  From our brief excursus of looking into reality we have found absolutely nothing.  The one thing that everything has in common is nothing.  It is for this reason that I contend the “god particle” that scientists have been looking for everywhere is actually nothing, that nothing is the glue holding all reality together.  Perhaps Berkeley was correct when he said “Esse est percipi” -To be is to be perceived.  Maybe we are just nothing, existing simply in the mind of God.

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[i]

[ii]

[iii]

[iv]

[v]

[vi]

[vii]

[viii]

[ix]

[x]

[xi]

[xii]

[xiii]

[xiv]

[xv]

[xvi]

[xvii]

Accidental Beauty

I read a story this week that at first glance made me shake my head and laugh.  Then after a moment I began to think that the story was actually covering something brilliant.  Buried in the Odd News section of the UPI website is a short story about a principle of a Private Christian School who canceled classes due to “Beautiful Weather.”[i]  Now to be honest I think most people would laugh when they first heard this, some might be uptight and be upset that school would be canceled for such a frivolous reason.  Now, parents have to figure out a way take care of their children that are home for the day unexpectedly.  But maybe, just maybe they should take the day off work for the same reason and teach a rapidly if not almost completely lost maxim to their children of the importance of Beauty.  I am not talking about the definition of what TV, movies or society calls beauty.  That is why I mentioned that it is a dying precept in today’s world.  So briefly I would like to look at what is Beauty and have we lost the meaning of it?  I would content that the question of beauty is an ontological question.  The proper relationality of the ontological perspective of beauty is what is needed.

Now the discipline that I tend to fall under is known in philosophical realms as Phenomenology.  Mainly stemming form the lines of thought from Hegel, Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and more recently Ricoeur.  I don’t expect most people to know anything about them or what Phenomenology is.  Honestly I sometime wonder if people working in that field really know what it is.  But in an effort to as briefly as possible summarize it, consider it a study of relationship.  The relationship of the thing, or being to others, it’s environment and itself preferably from an ontological perspective. 

Phenomenology has had its share of unusual ideas and characters.  In my experience many Epistemologists have been uncomfortable with it.  Maybe this is because it can seem to lack a logical and scientific edge to it on a cursory glance.  But then again, I think to most of the world philosophy in general is concerned an oddity and especially so are the philosophers.

I said all this to point out my bias on the excursion on Beauty.  I assume since the school is in Georgia they don’t get many “Snow Days”.  After reading about the “Beauty Day” at the school, and once I was over my laughter I thought of a theologian by the name Hans Urs von Balthasar.   His seminal work is his 16 book trilogy of systematic theology with his first book made up of 7 volumes being a theological aesthetics called “The Glory of the Lord”.  I happen to love Balthasar’s work and I really only have one thing to say to his most recent detractors that haven’t taken the time to read his works but rather rely isolated quotes; John Paul II was making him a Cardinal before he died so argue with him he approved of his work.

Beauty Lost

Balthasar begins his Aesthetics with an introduction into Form.  In fact the first book in his Aesthetics is titled I: Seeing the Form.  He reminds the reader of what traditionally until the modern era had been the cornerstone of thought, the three transcendentals, The Good, The True & The Beautiful.   From Plato to Aquinas all societies looked to the transcendentals for meaning and purpose.  According to Balthasar, Beauty “dances as an uncontrolled splendor around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to on another.[ii]  He contends that the idea of the transcendental of Beauty is become lost.   “…[How] impoverished Christian thinking has been by the growing loss of this perspective which once so strongly informed theology.”[iii]  

Indeed it is hard not to agree with him.  When was the last time you sat down to explain something and began with beauty?  It is not normal for beauty to be the starting point.  Rather as Balthasar points out it is sometimes the ending point but not the beginning.  Of course today we are taught to believe that beauty is subjective and “in the eye of the beholder.”  What one might call beautiful is somewhat subjective, but is beauty itself subjective?  For example, take Andres Serrano’s work Piss Christ.  It is considered both beautiful and profane.  How is this duality of state possible?  

By claiming this, it makes  what is beautiful is up to the perceiver rather than that which is being perceived the perceiver is thus given the power of true form and Being.  An archetypal form is granted to a plethora of perceivers in an illogical contradiction of being and truth.  This paradigm of reality is unsustainable at best.  As Balthasar points out, “In a world that no longer has enough confidence in itself to affirm the beautiful, the proofs of truth have lost their cogency.  In other words, syllogism may still dutifully clatter away like rotary presses or computers which infallibly spew out an exact number of answers by the minute.  But logic of these answers is itself a mechanism which no longer captivates anyone.  The very conclusions are no longer conclusive.”[iv]

So what is lost with the loss of the Beautiful?  What are the ramifications to man with the onset of the prevailing thought of the loss of transcendental in regards to beauty?   “[If] this is how the transcendentals fare because one of them has been banished, what will happen with Being itself? … The witness borne by Being becomes untrustworthy for the person who can no longer read the language of beauty.”[v]

For the Christian this dilemma is explained by the Imago Dei, man is created in the image of God.  God is the true Being.  Man is created in his image which is man participating in this image giving man being.  Man is able to comprehend the transcendentals because of this relationship he has with God in his image.   “As body, man is a being whose condition it is always to be communicated; indeed, he regains himself only on account of having been communicated.  For this reason, man as a whole is not an archetype of Being and of Spirit, rather their image; he is not the primal word, but a response; he is not the speaker, but an expression governed by the laws of beauty, laws which man cannot impose on himself.”[vi]

The loss of beauty is a reflection of the loss of relationship that man has with God.  The loss of participation in Being.  The relationship is marred as is the image.  Man must have a restored relationship with God in order to participate in Being.  Colin Gunton also see the relationality or loss of it in the Imago Dei as pivotal and tied to the “fragmentation of the realms of truth, goodness and beauty.”[vii]   “Human being in the image of God is to be understood relationally rather than in terms of the possession fixed characteristics such as reason or will...the displacement is damaging and sometime demonic in its outcome, because only where relatedness is held in tension with genuine otherness can things, both human and divine, all be given their due.”[viii]

Beauty Restored

So how is this relationship to be restored?  How is it possible to regain the true being of beauty?  Gunton touches on this when he says, “the world is what it is by virtue of its relation to those who bear the image of God.  The shape that the word takes is in large part determined by what we, the human creation, make of it….[It] can be said that the created world… reflects in different ways the being of God in communion.  The human creation, made in the image of God, reflects most directly the divine being in communion.”[ix]

Paul Ricoeur talks about the use of symbols that represent and participate with Being of divine for the purpose of bringing about real ontological change for an eschatological end.  He shows how a multitude of civilizations have reached out to bridge the gap between the relationship of man and the divine.  That is it symbols that take on the sacred nature of the divine in essence of the relationship with them.[x]  While I am not going into a study of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics, of which I ascribe to, my purpose here is to show the importance of the symbol as participating in the things represented.  In other words, of the being participating with the Being.  That form receives its form from the true Form and that often for the purpose of restoring a relationship with the divine.

The problem is that this always begins with the created reaching out to the creator, the being trying to reach out to the Being.  The Christian response to this differs from all other accounts as it begins with the primordial sacrament.  “The foundation of all this is the incarnation.”[xi]  Edward Schillebeeckx’s work Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter WithGod, shows how it is only through this out reach of divine love in the primordial sacrament that is Christ, that man can have a restored relationship with the divine and thus is the Imago Dei restored.  It is through divine love that beauty is regained into the transcendentals.  “For a sacrament is a divine bestowal of salvation in an outwardly perceptible form which makes the bestowal manifest; a bestowal of salvation in historical visibility….  Human encounter with Jesus is therefore the sacrament of the encounter with God.”[xii]  Participation with the divine is possible solely because of the divine sacrament.  

By restoring the relationality of man and the divine the place of beauty returns back with that of transcendental Being, or the divine.  It requires an ontological perspective to truly perceive beauty.  Returning to Balthasar we find, “Christian form is the most beautiful thing that may be found in the human realm…. It is from the standpoint that we must look to our supreme object: the form of divine revelation in salvation-history, leading to Christ and deriving from him.”[xiii] 

With this in mind I say that the school principle hit the nail right on the head when he declared that there should be no school because it was a “Beauty Day.”  One of the most profound statements I have seen in a long time is that of the Principle, “’The thought occurred to me that it would be great to call school off some day because it was too beautiful a day to go to school.’”[xiv]  So the next time you can go take advantage of God’s grace to us, call your boss and the school and let them know that you are not going that day, rather you are going to go fly a kite with your children.

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[i] http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2013/10/11/Principal-cancels-school-due-to-beautiful-day/UPI-27191381519118/

[ii] Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: I.  Seeing The Form. (New York: Ignatius Press, 1982), Pg. 18.

[iii] Balthasar. Pg. 9.

[iv] Ibid. Pg.19.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Ibid. Pgs. 21-23.

[vii] Colin E. Gunton, The One, The Three and The Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity The 1992 Bampton Lectures. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pg.6.

[viii] Ibid. Pg. 3 & 6.

[ix] Ibid. Pgs. 216 & 217.

[x] Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), Pg. 168.

[xi] E. Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God. (New York: Sheed an Ward, 1963), pg. 18.

[xii] Ibid. Pg. 15.

[xiii] Balthasar. Pgs. 28 & 29.

[xiv] http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2013/10/11/Principal-cancels-school-due-to-beautiful-day/UPI-27191381519118/