Nothing Quotes

“We have heard that when it arrived in Europe, zero was treated with suspicion. We don't think of the absence of sound as a type of sound, so why should the absence of numbers be a number, argued its detractors. It took centuries for zero to gain acceptance. It is certainly not like other numbers. To work with it requires some tough intellectual contortions, as mathemati­cian Ian Stewart explains.

"Nothing is more interesting than nothing, nothing is more puzzling than nothing, and nothing is more important than nothing. For mathematicians, nothing is one of their favorite topics, a veritable Pandora's box of curiosities and paradoxes. What lies at the heart of mathematics? You guessed it: nothing.

"Word games like this are almost irresistible when you talk about nothing, but in the case of math this is cheat­ing slightly. What lies at the heart of math is related to nothing, but isn't quite the same thing. 'Nothing' is ­well, nothing. A void. Total absence of thingness. Zero, however, is definitely a thing. It is a number. It is, in fact, the number you get when you count your oranges and you haven't got any. And zero has caused mathematicians more heartache, and given them more joy, than any other number.

"Zero, as a symbol, is part of the wonderful invention of 'place notation.' Early notations for numbers were weird and wonderful, a good example being Roman numerals, in which the number 1,998 comes out as MCMXCVIII ­one thousand (M) plus one hundred less than a thousand (CM) plus ten less than a hundred (XC) plus five (V) plus one plus one plus one (III). Try doing arithmetic with that lot. So the symbols were used to record numbers, while calculations were done using the abacus, piling up stones in rows in the sand or moving beads on wires.”
― Jeremy Webb, Nothing: From absolute zero to cosmic oblivion -- amazing insights into nothingness

“Hypnosis probably taps into physiological pathways similar to those involved in the placebo effect, says Kirsch. For one thing, the medical conditions that the two can improve are similar, and both are underpinned by suggestion and expectation—in other words, believing in a particular outcome. The downside is that some people do not respond as strongly to hypnosis as others. Most clinical trials involving hypnosis are small, largely because of a lack of funding, but they suggest that hypnosis may help pain management, anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, obesity, asthma and skin conditions such as psoriasis and warts.10 Finding a good hypnotherapist can be tricky, as the profession is not regulated, but hypnotizing yourself seems to work just as well. “Self-hypnosis is the most important part,” says Whorwell.”
― Jeremy Webb, Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion

“Your attitude toward other people can have a big effect on your health. Being lonely increases the risk of everything from heart attacks to dementia, depression and death, whereas people who are satisfied with their social lives sleep better, age more slowly and respond better to vaccines. The effect is so strong that curing loneliness is as good for your health as giving up smoking, according to John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago, Illinois, who has spent his career studying the effects of social isolation.”
― Jeremy Webb, Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion

“if you want to succeed in science, keep in mind the advice offered by cosmochemist Michael Lipschutz to his students: “Obey the Biblical injunction: seek and ye shall find. But seek not to find that for which ye seek.”
― Jeremy Webb, Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion

“Occam’s razor, which in colloquial terms means “keep it simple.”
― Jeremy Webb, Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion

“Noble gases are so called because, like the nobility, they do nothing. You might also call them rare gases, because they are so rare on Earth as to be nearly non-existent.”
― Jeremy Webb, Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion

“Next time you slip on a rock, you can blame it on diatoms’ shiny shells and excretions.”
― Jeremy Webb, Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion

“The placebo effect has an evil twin: the nocebo effect, in which dummy pills and negative expectations can produce harmful effects.”
― Jeremy Webb, Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion

“But what if a hole were real, Shockley asked: not just an absence of something, but a true nothing-that-is? What if it were a particle all on its own, with an independent existence just as real as the electron’s? If this were true, holes would not need to fear encountering an electron.”
― Jeremy Webb, Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion

“With most electrons at a standstill, these vacancies would themselves seem to be on the move: mobile “absences of electron” acting for all the world like positive charges—and moving the wrong way in a magnetic field.”
― Jeremy Webb, Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion

“Vacuums encountered in our daily lives are still close to atmospheric pressure. For example, 1 bar is the atmospheric pressure at sea level;”
― Jeremy Webb, Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion

“The development of general anesthesia has transformed surgery from a horrific ordeal into a gentle slumber. It is one of the commonest medical procedures in the world, yet we still don’t know how the drugs work.”
― Jeremy Webb, Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion

“the pineal located deep in the brain, which secretes the hormone melatonin. Melatonin is best known for synchronizing the activity of our internal organs, including the reproductive organs, with the diurnal and seasonal cycles, but it is also a potent antioxidant that protects the brain and other tissues from damage, so slowing down the aging process.”
― Jeremy Webb, Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion

“Some people are just born optimists. But whatever your natural disposition, you can train yourself to think more positively, and it seems that the more stressed or pessimistic you are to begin with, the better it will work.”
― Jeremy Webb, Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion

“At the moment, the theories which take us furthest back in time are the Grand Unified Theories. These GUTs are an attempt to show that three of the basic forces that govern the behavior of all matter—the strong and weak nuclear forces and the electromagnetic force—are no more than facets of a single “superforce.”
― Jeremy Webb, Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion

“Everyone knows too much booze or tobacco is bad for you, but if physical inactivity was packaged and sold as a product, it would need to carry a health warning label,” says Hughes.”
― Jeremy Webb, Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion

“In 1966, Gregg Hill took the world’s laziest summer job. First he was poked and prodded and had his fitness assessed by every technique then known to medicine. Then, for 20 days, he and four other student volunteers became the ultimate couch potatoes, confined to bed—not even allowed to walk to the toilet. The goal was to investigate how astronauts would respond to space flight, but when Hill and his fellows finally staggered to their feet, their drastic deterioration helped spark a revolution in medical care here on Earth. As Rick A. Lovett explains, before the experiment took place, bed rest was recommended for people with weak hearts. Afterward, doctors knew that it made them worse.”
― Jeremy Webb, Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion

“After 15 minutes—and what seemed like hundreds of shocks—the experiment ended with a series of mild shocks. Or so I thought, until Colloca told me that these last shocks were in fact all severe.”
― Jeremy Webb, Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion