The Giant of Nothingness

by Steven H. Cullinane on March 8, 2001

How the religion of Scientism currently regards the old concept of "the ether" is described by K. C. Cole in The Hole in the Universe (Harcourt, 2001), a book about the physics of "nothing." Cole writes:

Like the ether, nothing is both substantial and elusive, essential and superfluous, the most abstract and concrete of notions. Some people will always believe that Einstein's work effectively "disappeared" the ether, turning something into nothing. However, modern physics appears to be moving against the wind, in the other direction, turning nothing into a newly founded and fancied-up ether.

Those who favor more traditional religions may prefer Wallace Stevens on nothingness and the ether. In "A Primitive like an Orb" (1948) Stevens writes of

...the skeleton of the ether, the total
Of letters, prophecies, perceptions, clods
Of color, the giant of nothingness, each one
And the giant ever changing, living in change.

See also Richard Wilhelm's introduction to The I Ching (Princeton, 1967):

Here we have the fundamental concept of the Book of Changes. The eight trigrams are symbols standing for changing transitional states; they are images that are constantly undergoing change. Attention centers not on things in their state of being -- as is chiefly the case in the Occident -- but upon their movements in change.

For more on the trigrams, see Meditation on Hexagram 49.

For more on the giant of nothingness, see Midsummer Eve's Dream.

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