Do Physicists Know Nothing?
The title of this post is ambiguous. I meant it to be as several physicists, including some of the most prominent ones have been, not just ambiguous, but downright equivocating on the word “nothing.” As in the fallacy of equivocation. This post explains the informal logical fallacy of equivocation and gives the example of how some physicists commit the fallacy when trying to explain how the universe came from “nothing.”
The Fallacy of Equivocation
The fallacy of equivocation is using two different meanings or senses for the same word or phrase in the same argument. It is easy to define and explain, but can be difficult to spot at times.
Here is a YouTube video that explains the fallacy of equivocation clearly:
It can be hard though to notice when a shift of meaning in a word occurs in statements and arguments from one sentence to the next, especially one further down the line. Most who commit the fallacy, like all fallacies, don’t realize they are doing it. The one (some) physicists are making when using the word nothing equivocally should be more obvious than it apparently is.
Know Nothing Physicists?
Some physicists are claiming the universe (something) came from “nothing,” thus answering, once and for all, the age old metaphysical question of why there is something, rather than nothing. This violates what traditionally has been viewed as axiomatic in metaphysics; ex nihilo, nihil fit, “out of nothing, nothing comes.” Physicists are saying here out of nothing something can and does come. In fact, not just “virtual particles,” but the entire universe we now live in did. It came out of nothing. So what’s going on here, and why is this an example of the fallacy of equivocation?
ex nihilo, nihil fit: Out of Nothing, Nothing Comes
When philosophers ask this question of why there is something rather than nothing and say nothing can come from nothing, that is, something can not come from nothing, they are using the word “nothing” in the normal sense of not anything. Non-existence. Non-being. No thing existing at all. Being can not come from non-being because there’s nothing there to “do” anything. Why is there any being at all existing, rather than simple non-being? Is there a reason for the former obtaining, not the latter?
When physicists use the word “nothing” they are referring to the “vacuum” of “empty” space. Empty space was referred to as being “nothing” or a “vacuum” after the “aether” theory was discarded. There was nothing in “empty” space apparently. Except maybe light and gamma rays etc. passing through the empty space. When scientists first tried to create a vacuum that actually contained nothing, starting simply with containers that where emptied of air, etc., they ran into problems actually creating a real vacuum of absolutely nothing. As the cosmologist John Barrow stated:
Now the ’empty’ space itself started to be probed. Physicists discovered that their defensive definition of the vacuum as what was left when everything that could be removed had been removed was not as silly as it sounds. There was always something left: a vacuum energy that permeated every fiber of the Universe. This ubiquitous, irremovable vacuum energy was detected and shown to have a tangible physical presence.
John Barrow, The Book of Nothing, Vintage Books, 2002, p. 10.
It was discovered that the vacuum of empty space was actually full of energy that was “unstable” and could create “virtual” particles of matter that spontaneously arose from the vacuum or “nothing” and then quickly vanished back into “nothing.” Wow! they thought. Nothing is unstable and something can come from nothing! Not really. This “nothing” is a quantum state. A “rolling broth” of particles and energy. Something that has existence, not a state of non-being. You are getting virtual particles here from the energy of the vacuum, not nothing. Unless physicists believe energy is nothing, that it doesn’t exist. Of course they do not, as Barrow stated above: the vacuum of “empty” space has energy that has “a tangible physical presence.” In other words, even though they still refer to this quantum vacuum as “nothing” or “nothingness” it is clearly something, not nothing.
Lawrence Krauss, the author of A Universe From Nothing: Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing states directly that the “nothing” he is talking about is something, in fact “something physical.” Chapter 9 of his book is titled, “Nothing is Something.” Well, that is something. Something self referentially incoherent that is. Just as it would be if you turned it around and claimed, “something is nothing.” And these are obviously two different meanings to the word nothing between Krauss and company and philosophers. Yet Krauss, et. al. claim they are talking about the same thing. They claim to be answering the philosopher’s question of why there is something rather than nothing. Why there is being, rather than non-being. Yet they are not using the same word to refer to the same thing (or rather the same nothing).
That’s a clear equivocation on the part of the physicists. Many have spotted it, but it amazes me even when it is pointed out to them, some like Krauss don’t see it or pretend not to and keep on equivocating and pontificating about “nothing” creating the universe, thus no need for an uncaused First Cause (i.e. God). “Science” has finally solved the mystery. Perhaps he would say that this nothing-that-is-something wasn’t created, thus is the uncaused, First Cause, thus compounding the equivocation. Nothing is the First Cause.
Who is on first, Something is on second, Nothing is on third, Nobody is our shortstop…
If I say I ate nothing for lunch, that doesn’t mean I ate something with the moniker “nothing” and nothing tasted just like chicken! It means, simply, that I didn’t eat anything at all. No thing or nothing – that’s what the word means in plain english. Normally, if someone says “nothing is unstable” that means there isn’t anything that is unstable, that nothing is unstable, thus everything is stable. Nothing is unstable = everything is stable. When physicists say “nothing is unstable” they are clearly referring to something they call nothing.
The physics of what they are describing may be true, but it isn’t answering the philosophical questions they think it is. Why is nothing so hard for physicists to understand? Once they called empty space “nothing”, the name stuck I guess and they still think they are talking about “nothing” even when “empty” space or the “vacuum” of space is composed of something that has a “tangible physical presence.” Like, say a tree does. In other words, something not nothing.
As the philosopher Edward Feser stated,
The “scientific” “explanations” of the origin of the universe from “nothing” one keeps hearing in recent years … aren’t serious physics, they aren’t serious philosophy, they aren’t serious anything except seriously bad arguments, textbook instances of the fallacy of equivocation.
– Edward Feser, What part of “nothing” don’t you understand?
Or as Einstein reportedly said, “The man of science makes a poor philosopher.”
Further Reading
I will be dealing with these issues from time to time in future posts. For more on this, here are some articles and posts by others on physicists and the universe coming from “nothing” equivocation:
The Philosopher of Science, David Albert wrote a review of Kraus’ book A Universe From Nothing for the New York Times, On The Origin of Everything. He has a PhD in both physics and philosophy and writes on the philosophical aspects and interpretation of physics. He took Krauss to task on this issue of equivocation and said he hasn’t come anywhere near explaining the origins of everything from nothing or from anything else for that matter. Albert is an agnostic or atheist, so he has no “axe to grind” here except Krauss’s bad philosophy (logical fallacy). None-the-less, his review was scathing. Krauss, clearly hurt by the review, in response called Albert moronic. Another person responded that Krauss should apologize as major universities normally don’t hand out PhD’s in Physics and Philosophy to morons. Krauss I believe did. But, of course has continued peddling his equivocation, saying the universe came from nothing and physics proves it, therefore, no God. For a brief discussion of this see, Krauss vs. the Philosophers, by Brian Leiter.
Another atheist philosopher’s response:
Lawrence Krauss: another physicist with an anti-philosophy complex, by Massimo Pigliucci
The theist philosopher Edward Feser has had a little pet peeve or bone to pick with physicists on this issue. His earlier blog posts on this tend to be a little humorous in his annoyance as talking about nothing at all does. One of my favorite blog posts on this is:
Why are (some) physicists so bad at philosophy?
Another one, responding to an unintentionally humorous New Scientist article that attempts to explain how everything came from “nothing” or “nothingness”:
What part of “nothing” don’t you understand?
Other posts by Feser on this are here, here, and here.
Other responses to Krauss, Hawking, etc on this:
Philosophy Presented as Science Albert Norton blog post r.e. Krauss’ book.
Response to Stephen Hawking’s Physics-as-Philosophy by Wolfgang Smith, Sophia: The Journal of Traditional Studies, Volume 16, No 2, 2011, pp. 5-48.
For a good account of what physicists mean by nothing and how and why they came to refer to empty space as nothing, which actually turned out to be something after all see The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas about the Origins of the Universe by cosmologist John Barrow. eBay
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