Luminous Ground: The Zero with a Thousand Faces

Abstract

Whether or not the universe arises from ‘Nothing” depends on what one means by that word. A ‘quantum vacuum,’ can be distinguished from the philosopher’s, mystic’s or theologian’s idealized ‘nothing’. What we formerly took for nothing turns out, on closer examination, to have the makings of electrons, protons and neutrons. Ever since physics first penetrated the atom, a new kind of uncertainty has become a principle of science. The archetypes of cosmic history are those of raw nature. Nothing has ever existed. Aspect’s experiment showed electrons have extraordinarily mysterious aspects of being or moving we have dubbed “superpositions”. We are still left with interpreting the framed results of our experiments. Electrons emerge from the “black box” of science in a spectrum of possible directions. Analogously the philosophical pith of subquantal physics contains multiple avenues for continuing exploration.