Nothing comes from nothing

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Categories: Philosophical arguments | Latin philosophical phrases | Philosophy of physics | Philosophy stubs

Nothing comes from nothing is a philosophical expression of a thesis first argued by Parmenides, often stated in its Latin form: ex nihilo nihil fit. Today, the idea is loosely associated with the laws of conservation of mass and energy.

In logic, nothing is represented by the empty set, and it is trivially true that no thing (any defined concept or element) can be extracted from such a set. Other definitions of nothing are based on the negation of being (this is discussed by Heidegger for example), and with such a definition anything that doesn't yet exist and isn't completely determined does come from nothing, in an equally trivial sense.

In John Gardner's Grendel, Grendel says "Nihil ex nihilo" after he wakes up from a nightmare at the end of Chapter 10.

In Shakespeare's King Lear, the king says, "Nothing can come of nothing" to his daughter Cordelia, meaning that as long as she says nothing to flatter him, she will receive nothing from him.^[1] Later, Lear nearly repeats the line, saying, "Nothing can be made out of nothing." (Act 1.1 and Act 1.4 respectively).