Tuesday, April 24, 2012

What is "nothing"?

The definition of a fundamental word is often the most important part of a philosophical debate.  This is especially the case in the debate over how “something” arose from “nothing.”  The word nothing is the tricky word here because it is hard to imagine what "nothingness" would actually be or what we actually mean when we say the word nothing.  This difficulty can be seen in a recent criticism of a book by Lawrence Krauss.

Lawrence Krauss recently wrote a book explaining how modern cosmology and quantum mechanics can answer the question of how our universe could have arisen from empty space.  However, this book is not without criticism.  David Albert submitted one such criticism as a book review in the New York Times.  The problem is Albert failed to fully think through his argument.