Notice bibliographique
- Notice
Type(s) de contenu et mode(s) de consultation : Texte noté : sans médiation
Auteur(s) : Sorensen, Roy A.
Titre(s) : Nothing [Texte imprimé] : a philosophical history / Roy Sorensen
Publication : New York (N.Y.) : Oxford university press, copyright 2022
Description matérielle : 1 vol. (xxii-339 p.) ; 22 cm
Note(s) : Bibliogr. p. [325]-331. Notes bibliogr. Index
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without
form, and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Genesis 1:1-2 Creation
stories try to explain how everything originates from nothing. They leave something
out. Nothing also has a history. This book aims to tell it. Books about nothing go
back for billions of years. So say astronomers who conjecture that civilizations formed
soon after the universe cooled to form stars and planets. What did the antennas of
these historians miss that might be captured in this book? The hominid side of nothing.
I start with a cousin of homo sapiens who picked up a pebble with holes that seemed
to make faces (figure 0.1). Many faces later (each chapter pairs a philosopher with
an absence), I conclude with Bertrand Russell's precise analysis of how Caspar does
not exist' could be true (chapter 22). About the fifth century BC, three civilizations
independently and simultaneously began to philosophize about nothing: China (chapter
3), India (chapters 4 and 5), and Greece (chapters 6-10). They had previously focused
on what is the case. Light poured on nature, architecture, and society. But then,
in a cross-civilizational black-out, emerged disparate nay-sayers who shifted attention
to what is not the case. Behold, the holes in a sponge are absences of sponge! Holes
are what make the sponge useful for absorbing liquid. The sponge can exist without
the holes. But the holes cannot "exist" without the sponge. They are parasites that
depend on their host. Yet the two get along well. Without holes, there would not be
so many sponges in your house. Your shadow is a more complex parasite. It is a hole
you bore into the light. Your shadow depends on both you and the light. You and light
are rather mysterious. Your shadow partakes of both mysteries. Omissions have a yet
more complex relationship with action. Actions are events and so are not "things."
When you refrain from voting, you do not subtract from what is but rather from what
might be. When you regret not voting, your emotion requires counterfactual history:
If I had voted, my friend would have won. You are in the land of near-misses. Being
is riddled with non-beings. Why are the riddles first posed 2,600 years ago? Why all
at once? This negative turn in world philosophy is the coincidence that inspired me
to write Nothing: A Philosophical History. My hope was to find some common factor
that could explain the simultaneous and independent shift in perspective. The common
cause I postulate in this book is the deployment of a cognitive trick dreamed up cave
dwellers. Any waking experience of an event can also be explained by the parasitical
hypothesis 'he event was merely dreamt.' The parasite takes over the consequences
of the host hypothesis The event was perceived"
Sujet(s) : Néant (philosophie) -- Histoire
Indice(s) Dewey :
111.5 (23e éd.) = Non-être, néant
Identifiants, prix et caractéristiques : ISBN 9780197583289. - ISBN 0197583288. - ISBN 9780199912322 (erroné). - ISBN 9780199742837.
- ISBN 0199742839. - ISBN 9780197583272. - ISBN 019758327X
Identifiant de la notice : ark:/12148/cb467528080
Notice n° :
FRBNF46752808
(notice reprise d'un réservoir extérieur)