Hi Pimiskern,

thank you, but i'm not interested in physics, but specifically considered only philosophical sources.

Valentin

Hi Valentin!

As usual, you are excellent in raising philosophical questions. As you certainly know, the concept of nothing or nothingness has raised considerable interest, among others, in philosophers, such as Jean Paul Sartre, and psychologists, such as Karen Wynn. This woman and brilliant psychologist has devoted her scientific career to the study of the concept of numerosity in children. It seems relatively obvious that the philosophical concept of nothing or nothingness corresponds by and large to the mathematical concept of zero.

The best philosophical book I know regarding the concept of nothing or nothingness in philosophy is Sartre's book titled, L´ Étre et le Néant (Being and Nothingness).

I attach to this message an English version of this book, which I found in the NET. Enjoy its reading. A bit difficult, but not for you, I think. I also attach a psychological paper devoted to the concept of number in preschoolers. As is normal, in terms of natural numbers, children master, for example, 1, 2, 3, and so forth, priori to the concept of zero and empty class or set.

Psychologist Jean Piaget was also interested in the emergence and development of the number concept in children. Piaget is often faulted, by K. Wynn, for example, for underestimating children's several competencies, namely their numerical competence. It is worth mentioning, however, that Piaget was interested in grasping strong marks of the child's several competencies. In contradistinction, most of his critics were interested in grasping minimal indicators of such competencies. Because of this, Piaget did not underestimate the child's cognitive competencies as much as their critics tend to think. Note also that while studying the infant's abilities, object permanence, for example, Piaget appealed to, say, a search method, not to a looking time method. Because of these two aspects (i.e., conceptual and methodological) nothing would be more  natural  than to arrive at different  conclusions. Contrary to his critics, Piaget was also more interested in necessary rather than true knowledge. More to the point, according to Piaget, but not the majority of his critics, a given problem was a conceptual and epistemological problem before being an empirical problem.

In a nutshell, the interesting idea would be to study empirically when, how, and why children acquire the nothingness concept such as defined by certain philosophers and epistemologists, such as Sartre and Piaget, respectively. Note that for Piaget, any number has a cardinal component and an ordinal component. Wynn's experiments, just to cite an example, only take into account the cardinal component of the numerosity concept.

I hope that this may be of some help to you.

Best regards.

Dear Orlando,

thank you very much for the sources and for making them available (much appreciated.).

I would like to minimize any bias from me, thus restraint the answer to the analogy nothing - zero, as much as possible. I rather consider that zero is only a part, perspective of nothing but does not consume the concept completely. Once very simple example in this case are the way the Greeks where operating with zero in the geometric era (Euclid's period). By dividing 4 by 2, they used houses (or blocks) for representing the numeral. So the result was 2 houses and 1 empty house (for the rest term).

Best Regards,

Valentin

Dear Valentin,

Thank you your answer and the corrections. I follow you when you say that zero is only a part, perspective of nothing but does not consume the concept completely. if I understood it well, this means that the concept of nothing is not reducible to, and is more comprehensive than, the concept of zero. May be to the fact that the nothing concept is mainly a philosophical concept, and the zero concept is a scientific, namely a mathematical concept. May be the concept of zero is a way of operationalizing and understanding the concept of nothing. 

But what is it nothing? If you look for books on nothing, you should have at least an implicit conception of nothing. Literally, it seems that nothing does not exist as an ontological entity, but only as a concept. But if this is the case, then to what does it refer?    

I would really appreciating hearing from you and other RG members about these questions.

Best regards.

Dear Valentin,

The book "Nichts" by German philosopher Ludger Lütkehaus offers a comprehensive historical overview of the concept of nothing in Western philosophy. To my knowledge, there is not yet an English translation, but maybe it is of interest for you.

Kind regards,

Michael

http://www.worldcat.org/title/nichts-abschied-vom-sein-ende-der-angst/oclc/43170289&referer=brief_results

Dear Michael,

thank you very much for the reference. It is the kind of book i am looking for.  Deutsch wird kein Problem sein ;)

Best regards,

Valentin

Dear Olrando,

i am not a philosopher, thus my answers are rather simplistic.

Zero, being a number, is associated with a quantity. When one has 7-5-2 apples, one still has the apple in mind, even if none, of the one with which one stared (7), remained. Zero is, therefore, to concrete to be used as a helping concept for nothing.

Regarding the association between the concept of nothing and any ontological entity, i consider the difficulty to be in the concept of nothing (that is why i want to read more about it). If you can not have a concrete concept, then it is very difficult (if not impossible) to find any object of reality to associate with. The same is true the other way around, that is why no one can comprehend, for example, what a photon is, as the data can not be associated to any (classical) ontological entity.

The only sure remark one can make is that not all cultures can put the problem, can define the concept of nothing. The Christian religion is such a human perspective in which the concept has no meaning.

Best Regards,

Valentin