(April 14, 2016 at 9:55 am)LostLocke Wrote:(April 14, 2016 at 7:08 am)SteveII Wrote: That is utter nonsense. Nothing means "not anything". If a physicist means anything else, than it is something.
You do realize that words have more than one meaning, right?
'Prime' steak; 'prime' the pump. Same word, "prime", two different meanings.
"Theory", in science and common usage, two different meanings.
In German, "spiel" can be a verb, 'to play', or a noun, 'a game'. In English it means a long winded speech, something entirely different from its German meanings.
So... 'nothing' may mean something different in physics than it does in common usage.
No, nothing means "not anything". If you want to use the term to mean "the lowest energy state of a quantum vacuum", then you mean "the lowest energy state of a quantum vacuum"--which is something.