What came first: the chicken or the egg?
Forget the chicken and the egg. Both are somethings. How do somethings come from nothing at all?!
To formularise something we should account for nothing. However, one may suppose, as Parmenides did, that even to describe nothing (e.g. in notions such as emptiness, vacuity, and possible worlds) is to declare something about existence (i.e. somethingness).
While Parmenides et al considered it self-defeating to talk of nothing, Greek ‘atomists’, such as Democritus, in contrast, welcomed talk of the void. In fact, they claimed there are ‘only atoms and the void’, whereby atoms are compositions of the void itself, ruled by ideal laws. In this ontology the void is (existent). But, then, aren’t we back at the start?
Alain Badiou used Plato’s dream metaphor to claim something is logically tied to nothing without claiming there is a void (the void is not). Dreams are constructed in sleep. Sleep stops; the dream stops. But no matter how closely we look at dreams’ narratives we see multiplicity: an enormous story which actually grows in size the more we inspect its origins, without limits.
How are dreams (something) ontologically grounded in sleep (nothing)? Using set theory, Badiou explains how events are sutured to themselves under one narrative.
As soon as we grasp the entirety of the dream in a thinkable, ontological structure, the connection to sleep is shattered by discursive, wakeful thought.
In this way nothing always mediates a situation, ensuring events are consistent with themselves and traces to it are erased in presentation. Nothing is not: a non-being which sits below what is presented under an ‘ungraspable horizon’—a total, unprovable absence which is always necessary to avoid a ‘chicken or the egg’ situation about existence.
‘The absolutely primary theme of ontology is the void . . . [What presents] in-consists with nothing without any foundational stopping point.’
Is this mathematical magic?
