The Question Of Being Is The Darkest Of All Philosophy

The question of being is the darkest in all philosophy.† So concluded William James in thinking about that most basic of riddles: how did something come from nothing? The question infuriates, James realized, because it demands an explanation while denying the very possibility of explanation. â€Å"From nothing to being there is no logical bridge,† he wrote. In science, explanations are built of cause and effect. But if nothing is truly nothing, it lacks the power to cause. It’s not simply that we can’t find the right explanation—it’s that explanation itselffails in the face of nothing. This failure hits us where it hurts. We are a narrative species. Our most basic understanding comes through stories, and how something came from nothing is the†¦show more content†¦The ancient Greeks suggested that empty space is filled with substance—a plenum, an ether. Aristotle conceived of the ether as an unchanging fifth element, more perfect and heavenly in its invariance than earth, air, fire, or water. True nothingness was at odds with Aristotle’s physics, which said that bodies rise up or fall down as dictated by their rightful place in the natural order of things. Nothingness, however, would be perfectly symmetric—it would look the same from every angle—rendering absolute spatial directions like â€Å"up† and â€Å"down† utterly meaningless. An ether, Aristotle figured, could serve as a kind of cosmic compass, an ultimate reference frame against which all motion could be measured. For those who abhorred a vacuum, the ether banished every last trace of it. The ancient ether stuck around for millennia until it was re-imagined in the late 19th century by physicists like James Clerk Maxwell, who discovered that light behaves as a wave that always travels at a particular speed. What was waving, and speed relative to what? The ether was a handy answer, providing both a medium for light waves to travel through, and, as Aristotle originally imagined, a reference frame against which allShow MoreRelatedThe Philosophical Community As The Father Of Existentialism787 Words   |  4 PagesSoren Kierkegaard is known, almost universally, in the philosophical community as the Father of Existentialism. His works all seek to answer a fundamental question of existence, one that plagued humanity since the times of Aristotle and beyond; How should we life our lives? More specifically in his publication, Either/Or, Kierkegaard introduces two life philosophies, one of the aesthetic and one of the ethic. These viewpoints, argued and symbolized by two charact ers, â€Å"A†, and Judge Wilhelm. KierkegaardRead MoreWhat Makes People Happy?836 Words   |  4 PagesHappy? 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