nothing Like silence in John Cage's 'Lecture on Something': 'every something is an echo of nothing' (Dyson, 1992:131), a determinate negation is not simply negative. For instance in mathematics a zero is a definite negative number. In this way, it might be possible to extend the Hegelian logic of being as thesis and nothing as antithesis - to the binary structures of 1's and 0's - and end up with the synthesis of becoming - in other words, as the execution of computer code. In a sense, it is the inherent dialectic itself that sets its rhythm. Hegel would go further and claim that the dialectical method works because the world works dialectically. Here the distinction should be made between mere difference - something is not something else - and the more fundamental claim that something is not something else but depends on it to exist - this is contradiction (the Hegelian example of the relationship between Master and Slave is a good example). I am merely saying that it is an appropriate critical method for the study of computer functionality because at a fundamental level of operation, it works dialectically. It's difficult to say what something is until it turns into something else. Add notes from John D. Barlow's The Book of Nothing, London: Vintage 2001. If we add a zero to the right side of any number, it is multiplied by ten. In Indian mathematics, the zero symbol counts for absence as well as space making it a much more positive sense of absence (Barlow, 2001:35). In contrast, Leibnitz (working more in the Hebrew tradition of taking the void as the state from which the world was created) suggests: 'It is true that as the empty voids and the dismal widerness belong to zero, so the spirit of God and His light belong to the all-powerful One.' (quoted in Barlow, 2001: 42) In this conception, nothing is taken to be in separation from God and with corresponding negative connotations. Although the christianity suggested that creation came from nothing (creatio ex nihilo), creation was created itself by something - God the creator. To dispute this was heresy, thus scientists had to develop theories to account for God as well as Nature. In this way, God was increasingly conceptualised in terms of space: the 'infinite void' according to Newton for instance (whereas philosophers such as Leibnitz refused to equate God and space). God was seen by de Cusa: 'an infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere' (quoted in Barlow, 2001: 81). Indian tradition accepted non-being and being as equals in much more fluid terms - with nothing as a state from which we came and may return. The relationship between being and non-being is famously addressed in Existentialism - especially in Sartre's Being and Nothingness in which he contests Hegel's idea of the dialectic. Hegel argued that Being and Nothingness were equal and opposite - one as empty as the other. Sartre argues this is not the case, that they are thoroughly different, in that their asymmetry is accounted for: 'emptiness is emptiness of something' (J-P Sartre, Being and Nothingness, London: Routledge, 1998: 15; quoted in Barlow, 2001: 58). In other words, the argument is whether nothing is the opposite of something, or whether it has nothing to do with something. In this regard, Barlow quotes Aldous Huxley and the example of 'God and the empty set': 'You know the formula: m over nought equals infinity, m being any positive number? Well, why not reduce the equation to a simpler form by multiplying both sides by nought? In which case, you have m equals infinity times nought. That is to say that a positive number is the product of zero and infinity. Doesn't that demonstrate the creation of the universe by an infinite power out of nothing?' (2001: 171-2; quoting from Point Counter Point, London: Grafton (1928) p. 135) In other terms: m = ° x 0 - 0 Paradox is now regarded as part of reality. For instance, Kurt Gšdel demonstrated that certain statements in arithmetic were impossible to prove as either true or false even when using the rules and symbols of arithmetic. For instance, paradoxes that were both true and false proved the limits of mathematical method. (see Hofstadter) Similarly, through quantum theory, matter was discovered to have 'complementary pairs of attributes of things which could not be measured simultaneously with arbitrary precision, even with perfect intruments' (Barlow, 2001: 215, describing the work of Werner Heisenberg). This became known as the 'Uncertainty Principle'. For instance, uncertainty arises in the way that the very act of measuring something disturbs the thing being measured in some way and hence makes the measurement unreliable. The measurer is part of the system as a whole and hence influences it in some way. The principle sets a limit to classical ideas of position and momentum in the description of a quatum state - both concepts cannot co-exist when one enters the quantum regime explains Barlow (2001: 215). -- note: Roy Varra - performer who simply stood in Tianneman Square as a provocative action - although doing nothing. He was arrested. Note: There's a Lacanian twist to this too, in the elaboration of Ernst Kris's case of the 'pathological' self-accusation of plagiarism, between 'stealing nothing (in the simple sense of "not stealing anything")' and 'stealing Nothingness itself'. Lacan emphasises that this should not be taken at face value but that 'the real plagiarism is in the form of the object itself' and is thus not innocent as such. The patient is actually stealing nothing like the anorexic is not simply eating nothing but 'eating Nothingness itself' (Zizek, 1999: 108-9).