An entertaining history of the idea of nothing - including absences, omissions, and shadows - from the Ancient Greeks through the 20th centuryHow can nothing cause something? The absence of something might seem to indicate a null or a void, an emptiness as ineffectual as a shadow. In fact, 'nothing' is one of the most powerful ideas the human mind has ever conceived. This short and entertaining book by Roy Sorensen is a lively tour of the history and philosophy of nothing, explaining how various thinkers throughout history have conceived and grappled with the mysterious power of absence -- and how these ideas about shadows, gaps, and holes have in turned played a very positive role in the development of some of humankind's most important ideas. Filled with Sorensen's characteristically entertaining mix of anecdotes, puzzles, curiosities, and philosophical speculation, the book is ordered chronologically, starting with the Taoists, the Buddhists, and the ancient Greeks, moving forward to the middle ages and the early modern period, then up to the existentialists and present day philosophy. The result is a diverting tour through the history of human thought as seen from a novel and unusual perspective.

IntroductionNothing Represented1 The Makapansgat Hominid: Pictorial Absence2 Hermetes Trismegistus: Discursive AbsenceRelative Nothing3 Lao Tzu: Absence of Action4 Buddha: Absence of Wholes5 Nagarjuna: Absence of GroundAbsolute Nothing6 Parmenides: Absence of Absence7 Anaxagoras: Absence of Total Absences8 Leucippus: Local Absolute AbsencesPotential Nothing9 Plato: Shades of Absence10 Aristotle: Potential Absence meets Absence of Potential11 Lucretius: Your Future Infinite AbsenceDivine Nothing12 Saint Katherine of Alexandria: Absence of Non-existent Women Philosophers13 Augustine: The Evil of Absence is an Absence of Evil14 Fridugisus: Synesthesia and Absences15 Maimonides: The Divination of AbsenceScientific Nothing16 Bradwardine: Absence of Determination17 Newton: A Safe Space for Absence18 Leibniz: Absence of ContradictionSecular Nothing19 Schopenhauer: Absence of Meaning20 Bergson: The Evolution Absence21 Sartre: Absence Perceived22 Bertrand Russell: Absence of ReferentsReferences