----- Original Message -----
From: "michaelP" <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2004 12:25 AM
Subject: all or nothing at all
> Kenneth called out from the desert:
>
> > "Why is there anything at all? Why, rather, is there not nothing?"
It is all a matter of scale. For a tiny fish in the southern Pacific, a
minor 'atoll' of coral is 'something' rather than 'nothing at all'. Outside
the 'at all/atoll' are voracious fish which would swallow the tiny coral
dependent.
chao
John Foster
"but for an ocean cruise ship, a simple insignificant 'at-all/atoll' is
nothing."
>
> Indeed, Ken'th, this is the most beguiling question that screams its
silent
> scream whenever any real thinking takes place whether the question is
> addressed or not. What does it mean -- to be? rather than -- not to be?
> That's the edge of the question on the shifting horizon of the 'rather'.
> Be-ing receives its contour of meaning only when non-be-ing is seen as the
> limit, the bound of be-ing. Non-be-ing is always a possibility for be-ing.
> In terms of beings, a being might not be at all: e.g., taking electrons
> (etc, I mean sub-atomic particles), in a high-speed collision with other
> particles, an electron (a particular, a this, electron) might vanish (qua
> electron, qua, this electron); also we might consider our own death --
when
> we die we cease to be a human being, i.e., when we are only a body, and a
> rotting or rotted one at that, we are no longer a human being but a body,
a
> corpse, a once-was-human-being.
>
> The question becomes pertinent too when we consider the (possibly loopy)
> scientific notion of the Big Bang. It is almost impossible not to ask,
when
> confronted with a conception of the beginnings of the universe: why?! Why
> should it have ever begun? What does it mean to suggest that whilst space
> and time began with the Bang, it needs space-time (even at the
coordinates,
> zero/zero) to begin at all? And, since all of this is apparently evidenced
> from observing the expanding universe (etc), such evidence comes (via the
> fact of the finite speed of light) observing stuff from the remote past
> (because it is so far far away) which apparently was accelerating away
from
> all other stuff, is it not possible that the supposed accleration reached
a
> maximum and now the universe is contracting again, imploding? But much
more
> importantly, why can we not ask what was in being before the Bang? They
say
> either "nothing" or that they/we have reached the limits of science
(science
> can not, cannot, will not, conceive of nothing (as no thing)). If we
persist
> in asking why? they will declare that all we speak of is nothing (because
> they can not, will not, think their, their! nothing) and thus we are
> indulging either in mystical claptrap or some brand of nihilism (as if
that
> was something full of awe and thus deserved war).
>
> At every moment of thinking the question Kenneth has raised is imminent
and
> immanent, shivering on the brink, whenever a being is present, taken for
> granted as be-ing the being that it is. Taken for granted: what a tissue
of
> possibilities for thinking this innocent phrase contains; what grants?
>
> More later, I need to go walking/thinking in the dim autumnal light, not
> caring one jot how the vote has gone...
>
> regards
>
> michaelP
>
>
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>
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