The Physics of Nothing - Uncertainty is the source of Creativity

Physicist Ethan Siegal has a knack for making difficult concepts accessible to a general audience of non-physicists  (like myself). In his blog 'Starts With A Bang' he stays away from the heavy math, and uses lots of beautiful images, cartoons, and quotes to communicate the essential ideas. Two posts that cover the concept of a physical definition of nothingness, and it's relation to the unfolding of our ever expanding universe serve as nice examples (here, and here).

Philosophically the idea of 'nothing' is difficult to comprehend. We can only imagine it in relation to 'something'. Often what we imagine is empty space. This empty space however is not really 'empty'. As Siegal puts it:

We are surrounded by matter, radiation, and energy everywhere we look. Even if we blocked it all out — creating a perfect, cold, isolated vacuum — we still wouldn’t have nothing.We would still exist in curved spacetime.

We can only imagine the form of ‘nothingness’ where a space/time dimension is completely flat.

Even on the smallest physical scale (a Planck scale) with curvature removed, space-time is still not completely empty. On a Planck scale, relative to human scale a single atom is about the size of the sun. On this scale in a quantum vacuum, fundamental physical particles do not exist as separate objects the way we conceptualize objects normally. Empty space even on this scale is not really 'empty' but instead vibrates, and this vibration contains a fundamental uncertainty (look up ‘Uncertainty Principle’).  

Siegal describes this vibrational uncertainty:

This quantum vacuum — on these very small scales — manifests this fundamental uncertainty by spontaneously creating pairs of particles-and-antiparticles for very brief amounts of time.

Recent state of the art experiments in vacuum chambers suggest that this fluctuating uncertainty creates an attractive force that is always present within this type of 'nothingness'. Ironically the attractive force within this type of 'nothingness' can only cause an expansion. The result is an expanding universe ('something' from a type of 'nothingness'). The source of the expanding universe is uncertainty. 

The quantum state is uncertain, yet full of possibility for expansion and creativity.

Lets compare this cutting edge physics to another of Lao Tzu's insights, paragraph 1 of Chapter 25 of the Tao Te Ching as translated by Stan Rosenthal:

25. THE CREATIVE PRINCIPLE OF TAO
The creative principle unifies
the inner and external worlds.
It does not depend on time or space,
is ever still and yet in motion;
thereby it creates all things,
and is therefore called
'the creative and the absolute';
its ebb and its flow extend to infinity.

The creative ('something' from 'nothing') principal unifies the subjective and objective worlds. It does so even when the space-time curvature is flattened. In the quantum state paradoxically there is both stillness and motion, and this flux holds the possibility for infinite creativity. Taoist philosophy does not speak in absolutes other than in paradoxical form such as, 'the only constant is change'. Here I interpret 'the creative and the absolute' to refer to uncertainty.

Creativity has as it's source a well of uncertainty which is absolute.

Siegal also quotes Alan Watts connecting this concept with Buddhist philosophy. 
(click the quote for video)

  "Nothingness is really like the nothingness of space,which contains the whole Universe. All the Sun and the stars and the mountainsand rivers and the good men and the bad men and the animals and the insects,the whole bit: all arecontained in the void. So out of this void comes everything, and you're it.

Finally, the great physicist Niels Bohr was famously quoted:

“How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.”

These concepts seem to me continuous between the objective world of physical observations, and the subjective world of cognitive insights. If we begin from a place of subjective certainty we will likely be drawn towards observations that confirm our certainty, thus nothing novel will be created. If we embrace our subjective uncertainties perhaps an intrinsic curiosity may emerge. This curiosity will emerge not in search of confirmation, but instead to attract understanding.
  

"It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives." --Francis Bacon

"Nothing contains all things. It is more precious than gold, without beginning and end… Nothing always inspires. Where Nothing is, there ceases the jurisdiction of kings." - See more at: http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/01/the-eternal-renewal-of-the-vacuum.html#more

"Nothing contains all things. It is more precious than gold, without beginning and end… Nothing always inspires. Where Nothing is, there ceases the jurisdiction of kings." - See more at: http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/01/the-eternal-renewal-of-the-vacuum.html#more

"Nothing contains all things. It is more precious than gold, without beginning and end… Nothing always inspires. Where Nothing is, there ceases the jurisdiction of kings." - See more at: http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/01/the-eternal-renewal-of-the-vacuum.html#more

"Nothing contains all things. It is more precious than gold, without beginning and end… Nothing always inspires. Where Nothing is, there ceases the jurisdiction of kings."--
Otto von Guerike

"on the microscopic level there exists a further source of still more radical uncertainty, embedded in the quantum structure of matter. A mutation is in itself a microscopic event, a quantum event, to which the principle of uncertainty consequently applies. An event which is hence and by its very nature essentially unpredictable."--Jacques Monod - Chance and Necessity (1970)