Editing Nothing (section)

====Parmenides====
One of the earliest Western philosophers to consider nothing as a concept was [[Parmenides]] (5th century BCE), a Greek philosopher of the [[monist]] school. He argued that "nothing" cannot exist by the following line of reasoning: To speak of a thing, one has to speak of a thing that exists. If one can speak of a thing in the past, this thing must still exist (in some sense) now, and from this he concluded that there is no such thing as change. As a corollary, there can be no such things as ''coming-into-being'', ''passing-out-of-being'', or ''not-being''.{{sfn|Russell|1995|pp=66–70}}

Other philosophers, for instance, [[Socrates]] and [[Plato]]{{sfn|Russell|1995|pp=66–67}} largely agreed with Parmenides's reasoning on nothing. Aristotle differs with Parmenides's conception of nothing and says, "Although these opinions seem to follow logically in a dialectical discussion, yet to believe them seems next door to madness when one considers the facts."<ref>Aristotle, ''On Generation and Corruption'', '''I''':8, 350 BCE, translator H. H. Joachim, The Internet Classics Archive, [http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/gener_corr.1.i.html retrieved] 24 January 2009.</ref>{{sfn|Russell|1995|p=85}}<ref>Walter E. Wehrle, ''The Myth of Aristotle's Development and the Betrayal of Metaphysics'', p. 77, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001 {{ISBN|1461609879}}.</ref>

In modern times, [[Albert Einstein]]'s concept of [[spacetime]] has led many scientists, including Einstein himself, to adopt a position remarkably similar to Parmenides.<ref>[[Karl Popper]], ''The World of Parmenides: Essays on the Presocratic Enlightenment'', p. 172, Routledge, 2013 {{ISBN|1317835018}}.</ref> On the death of his friend [[Michele Besso]], Einstein consoled his widow with the words, "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For those of us that believe in physics, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."<ref>[[Gary R. Mar|Gary Mar]], "Gödel's ontological dream", ch. 36 in Shyam Wuppuluri, Giancarlo Ghirardi (eds), ''Space, Time and the Limits of Human Understanding'', p. 469, Springer, 2016 {{ISBN|3319444182}}.</ref>