nothing

Complete absence of anything

ConceptconceptQ154242

Also known as no-thing · no thing

Instance of: concept

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Nothing, no-thing, or no thing is the complete absence of anything, as the opposite of something and an antithesis of everything. The concept of nothing has been a matter of philosophical debate since at least the 5th century BCE. Early Greek philosophers argued that it was impossible for nothing to "exist". The atomists allowed nothing but only in the spaces between the invisibly small atoms. For them, all space was filled with atoms. Aristotle took the view that there exists matter and there exists space, a receptacle into which matter objects can be placed. This became the paradigm for classical scientists of the modern age, like Isaac Newton. Nevertheless, some philosophers, like René Descartes, continued to argue against the existence of empty space until the scientific discovery of a physical vacuum.

Overview

All data

42 statements · 19% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Opposite of: everything criterion used: complement
something criterion used: inverse
certain thing criterion used: existence
Different from: never
absence
Facet of: non-existence
non-existent entity
Members / parts: none
Said to be the same as: non-being
nothingness
non-existence
Rien
zero
Native label: Anyen

On other databases

27 identifiers linking nothing across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

19%

externally sourced

Source last edited September 21, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

Suggest a fact or correction

Links

Use this data

curl https://aidb.si/api/v1/entities/Q154242

API docs, limits & keys

Cite this page

AIDB. (2026). nothing (Q154242). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/nothing-Q154242