Everything Is "Nothing"
"The world is not made of matter. It is made of relationships." — Carlo Rovelli
Everything is essentially "nothing," but certain configurations of nothing give rise to what we perceive as "something." While commonly known concepts in physics assert that matter is mostly empty space or that everything is composed of fields— there's something quite fascinating about this realisation. When we look beyond the equations, the concepts— there is something existentially unsettling about the nature of reality.
Space can be seen as the default—the fundamental canvas upon which everything else emerges. Matter, then, is simply space shaped into particles or patterned energy. From this perspective, what we call matter might just be "condensed" or "organised" space. Certain regions of space have fields structured in ways that give rise to the phenomena we identify as particles. In a sense, space is always present, but occasionally it vibrates or twists into patterns that manifest as solidity.
When we speak of "nothingness" or "empty space," we generally refer to places devoid of sensory-detectable matter—no atoms, objects, or noise. However, this so-called nothing still retains structure. It holds quantum fluctuations, fields, and even spacetime curvature influenced by gravity— even, the fact physical laws exist is not nothing. Thus, what we perceive as empty matter is merely space lacking sensory-relevant structure. But crucially, it is never genuinely nothing. It always contains something, even if we cannot directly sense it. Perhaps, the concept of nothing is a theoretical abstract concept, not something that exists in reality.
Consider how noise becomes music when structured appropriately. It's all just vibrations—yet structured vibrations are perceived as "something" significant. Likewise, the solidity and richness we experience in planets, bodies, and thoughts might simply be ripples upon a sea of fundamental emptiness. It's the configuration, not the underlying substance, that matters.
The baseline, the undifferentiated backdrop, is nothing, yet when this nothingness arranges itself through specific configurations of energy fluctuations, field interactions, or structured matter, it emerges as something meaningful to us. We often ask how "something" can come from nothing—a question that feels quite romantic, providing a sense of existential curiosity, a feeling that validates our existence within a potentially meaningless reality. But perhaps a more appropriate question should be: How can something come from something? Yet, of course, even this doesn't feel right—it diminishes the beauty of the original question we are so drawn to ask.