"Nozick’s own hypotheses were certainly strange. One was that the primal
nothingness might have been so annihilating that it annihilated itself,
thus producing being. This echoes a much-mocked line of Heidegger’s:
“nothing noths” (“Das Nichts nichtet”)."
'Why Does the World Exist?' by Jim Holt; New York Times, August 2, 2012.
That whole article is fascinating. I love this phrase: “a closed spherical spacetime of zero radius.”
ReplyDeleteYes, it is hard to visualize nothingness. Heidegger's phrase reminds me of Finnegans Wake and other works of writing that use words in such a way as to suggest, to me, the uncanniness and strangeness of "things" like being and nothingness. I like that Bakewell refers to anxiety ("the anxiety we feel in the thought of “nothing” brings us face to face with Being itself")--it is just one of many possible emotions one can experience when confronting these topics--awe, confusion, ecstasy even.
Heidegger has a lot of very interesting ideas. I've started to try to understand some of them.