Nothing comes from nothing

Nothing comes from nothing (Latin: nihil fit ex nihilo) is a philosophical expression of a thesis first argued by Parmenides. It is associated with ancient Greek cosmology, such as is presented not just in the opus of Homer and Hesiod, but also in virtually every internal system – there is no break in-between a world that did not exist and one that did, since it could not be created ex nihilo in the first place.

De Rerum Natura

The Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius expressed this principle in his first book of De Rerum Natura (eng. title On the Nature of Things)

But by observing Nature and her laws. And this will lay
The warp out for us - her first principle: that nothing's brought
Forth by any supernatural power out of naught.
For certainly all men are in the clutches of a dread -
Beholding many things take place in heaven overhead
Or here on earth whose causes they can't fathom, they assign
The explanation for these happenings to powers divine.
Nothing can be made from nothing - once we see that's so,
Already we are on the way to what we want to know.

He then continues on discussing how matter is required to make matter and that objects cannot spring forth without reasonable cause.

For if things were created out of nothing, any breed
Could be born from any other; nothing would require a seed.
People could pop out of the sea, the scaly tribes arise
Out of the earth, and winged birds could hatch right from the skies.
Born willy-nilly, every animal, both wild and tame,
Would inhabit cultivated land and wilderness the same.
The same tree would not always grow the same fruit - what might bear
An apple one time, might, the next, produce a quince or pear.
Since there would be no generating particles, then neither
Would certain things arise from only a certain kind of mother.
But since in fact each species rises from specific seeds,
Each thing springs from the source that has the matter that it needs,
The primary particles, and comes into the boundaries
Of light, and that's the reason every thing cannot give rise
To every other thing, because there is a separate power
In distinct things.

English translation – ex nihilo nihil fit

Literally translated, this Latin phrase means, "out of nothing, nothing [be]comes." The Latin preposition 'ex', which the reader may recognize from many English derivatives such as exit, means 'out of'. 'Nihilo' is the ablative form of the Latin noun 'nihilum' meaning 'Nothing'. 'Fit' is the present indicative form of the Latin verb fio meaning 'to become'.

Modern physics

The law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system cannot change. The zero-energy universe states that the amount of energy in the universe minus the amount of gravity is exactly zero. That is the only kind of universe that could come from nothing, assuming such a zero-energy universe is, already, nothing. Such a universe would need to be flat, a state which does not contradict current observations that the universe is flat with a 0.5% margin of error.

Some physicists, such as Lawrence Krauss, Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku, define nothing as an unstable quantum vacuum that contains no particles. This is different from the philosophical conception of nothing, which has no inherent properties, and is not governed by physical laws.

References in works of fiction

In William Shakespeare's King Lear, the king's daughter Cordelia is unable to put her love for him into words, saying, "my love’s More ponderous than my tongue" (Act 1.1). The king says, "Nothing will come of nothing", meaning that as long as she says nothing to flatter him, she will receive nothing from him. Later, Lear nearly repeats the line, saying, "Nothing can be made out of nothing" (Acts 1.1 and 1.4 respectively).

See also

• Antimetabole
• Empedocles
• Ex nihilo
• Melissus of Samos
• Principle of sufficient reason
• Spontaneous symmetry breaking
• Vacuum energy

Further reading

• Lucretius. (2007). The Nature of Things. Trans. A. E. Stallings. New York: Penguin Classics.

External links

• [1] Lucretius' De Rerum Natura trasnslated by William Ellery at the Inernet Classics Archive.