A Guide to Nothing

If one is looking for the significance of nothing, it is not likely to be found here.

#1* Zero

There is a fair amount of debate on the origin of zero as a number. The great mathematician Al Khawarizmi was not the first to quantify nothing, but gets credit for adding rigor to the study of nothing. Zero is considered even, which is kind of odd.

#2 Descartes

Descartes claimed to have understood nothing, but lost heart and proved god so he would have company.

#3 Russell and Whitehead

Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead sought to reconstruct mathematics from nothing. They produced a text which is famously obtuse in a field not known for accessibility.

#4 Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein thought Russell was a clown. Wittgenstein went on to write nothing.

#5 Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett wrote something, but the something was generally there to accentuate nothing.

#6 Yves Klein

Yves Klein painted nothing. Ironically, he wasn’t satisfied with the result and felt the need to touch it up.

#7 John Cage

People paid a lot of money to see John Cage not perform.

#8 Alexei Neonov

Alexei Leonov stepped out of the spacecraft Voskhod 2 into nothing. It turns out that heat is a thing. Nothing is, among other things, very cold.

#9 Seinfeld

Seinfeld set out to create a show about nothing. After 9 seasons television stopped being

#10 The Really Big Button

“The Really Big Button That Doesn’t Do Anything” was, for a time, one of the most visited locations on the Internet. Nothing sells, as long as it doesn’t cost anything.

* Cantor proved that the points in between the rational numbers are greater in number than the rational numbers. The points in between are irrational, but they are not nothing. Pie, for example, is a thing.