"Tipote" - On the Meaning of Nothing

Vrasidas Karalis, Associate Professor in Modern Greek Studies at the University of Sydney, published an out-of-the-ordinary book in 2008, "Recollections of Mr Manoly Lascaris" (Brandl and Schlesinger, Sydney), based on his meetings and conversations with the enigmatic Manoly Lascaris, partner of Nobel Prize winning novelist Patrick White. Here is an extract:

- He used that strange word tipote in Greek, for nothingness. 'What-when' is the literal translation. Aristotle puzzled over its meaning.

  'Why do we call nothingness "what-when" in Greek?' I asked.

  'Because the ancient Greeks were pragmatists,' he responded, 'the way modern people aren't, despite their scientific mentality. They wanted to indicate that nothingness is the absence of space and time, which is in itself unimaginable. Can you imagine something which is nowhere? An old problem, of course. The only nothingness that exists is in our hearts, or the nothingness that we create through our inability to communicate. Nothing changes except our heart.'

If you find that sort of exchange intriguing, then this could be a book for you.