Thursday, 14 June 2012 22:35

Liverpool SciBar – 3rd July 2011 - Nothing Matters!

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scibar12-07July's SciBar in Liverpool is by Ronald Green and he will be talking about "nothing"!

Why should nothing matter? If anything matters, why should nothing matter? And yet it does, for there isn't anything, it seems, that nothing does not touch, or anything that does not touch nothing. History, philosophy, religion, science, art, literature, music – all look towards nothing at some point, stimulating questions that would otherwise not be asked.

Who, for example, could have believed that nothing held back progress for 600 years in the Middle Ages, all because of mistaken translation, or that nothing is a way to tackle (and answer) the perennial question "what is art?"? Ronald Green uses nothing in a genuine attempt to look at the world in a different way, to give new angles to old problems and so to stimulate new thoughts.

What is this nothing, that we can't actually see, touch or feel? Is it absolute? Is it relative to everything else? If we are able to think about it, write and read about it, is it something, and if so wouldn't it then not be nothing?

This is precisely the mystery of nothing – that the more we think about it, the more there is to it.

Disarmingly invisible, the point of nothing – to paraphrase Bertrand Russell on philosophy – is to start with something so simple as to seem not worth examining, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

For the past five years Ronald has been thinking seriously about nothing, culminating in his recently-published book "Nothing Matters – a book about nothing" (iff-Books)

Come along on Tuesday 3rd July at 7:30pm to the Ship and Mitre and find out more.  As always the audience will be welcome to give their own opinions and ask questions.  Remember there's no such thing as a silly question at SciBar!

Follow on Twitter @merseysci

Website: http://www.scibar.org.uk/


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