Sometimes, when my wife is away on a trip, I still set the table for two or pour two glasses of milk. Most things like that are the result of habit. I know she is not there but habit takes over, the table looks right set for two and it is only after a time that I realize I made a mistake.
Maybe you have heard of Occam's Razor, a principle from logic and philosophy that one should only consider as few things real as possible. Thinkers discovered that if I realize there is no elephant in my room and I begin to think of my lack of elephants as are real thing, as elephantlessness, something that the government might tax and that religion might praise or condemn, I can get into trouble thought-wise.
The poem "Antigonish"(1899) flirts with such trouble:
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today,
I wish, I wish he'd go away...
When I came home last night at three,
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall,
I couldn't see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don't you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door...
Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little man who wasn't there,
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away..
Even little kids will ask how he could go away if he is already not there. You can get a whiff of the difficulties that can come from reifying nullities. Critical thinkers and investigators like to ask "What is not being said?" Of course, normally just about everything is not being said but what they mean is what is expected to be included but wasn't. Mystery writers, from Conan Doyle on, have made use of the fact that the watchdog DIDN'T bark, deducing that the dog knew the intruder and thus narrowing the number of suspects.
You know the court oath that one should tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That is often the goal: all the information that matters and nothing that purports to be relevant information but isn't.
I have read some of Frank Close's "Very Short Introduction to Nothing", which is mostly about vacuums and outer space where matter is very sparsely distributed. Thinking of that book, I found that Amazon has 212 pages of books related to the word, title, subject matter of "nothing".
In modern educated English, a double negative is often taken to mean the opposite of negative. "There ain't nothing" = "it is not the case that there is nothing", so there is something. However, in some places, times and groups, double negatives are considered to be simply twice as negative as just one. I suppose triple negatives (I ain't never going to not...) are even more emphatically negative that a mere two of them.
--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
