Everything in Nothing: The Secrets of Life and the Universe

Entering the 21st century, human civilization is faced with three serious challenges. The first is the conflict between science and religion. The development of science and technology has fundamentally changed the lifestyle of human beings, and thus has brought up a brand-new religion in the entire human society, the superstition of science. Such a superstition of science has greatly changed the structure and landscape of human culture, and shaken the foundation of moral and ethical values of the society. Second, advances of technology, cultural exchange, increasing population growth and mobility have turned human societies all over the world into a global village, in which conflicts among religions and ideologies are magnified to an inescapable degree. The impact of different worldviews and moralities on people’s attitude to life and on social culture causes serious psychological and mental problems, and profound social problems, which many individuals and societies are struggling to deal with. Thirdly, the unbalanced developments between technology and the humanities highlights the uncertainty in the future of human civilization. On one hand, the development of artificial intelligence has blurred the boundaries between machines and life, while human beings are expanding into outer space; on the other hand, all sorts of pollution to the environment and the depletion of resources have seriously threatened the earth’s habitability for human being. The civilization on Earth has come to a critical fork point.Everything in Nothing answers these big questions about individuals, society and civilization in an analytical and dialectical way. Starting from the basic concept that life is characterized with perceptions, and using critical logical reasoning as the basic tool, it develops an all-encompassing philosophical framework, which builds not only the epistemological and metaphysical foundation for religion, faith and morality, but also the bridge between physics and metaphysics. Combining the Buddhist theory of consciousness-only with the Taoist doctrine of I Ching, and integrating concepts and researches from Christianity, Zen tradition, Confucianism, mathematics and physics, the author shows the existence of the Thing-in-itself from an epistemological and metaphysical perspective, and thus reveals the secrets of the phased existence and evolution of life and the consciousness-only nature of the physical world. When applying the theoretical framework to modern cosmology, the author proposes radically different answers to some critical and important questions in the area. In addition, the book also investigates some social problems from the same philosophical position. With convincing fusion of philosophy, Buddhism, theology, I Ching, cosmology and sociology, Everything in Nothing provides not only inspirations for religious and theological practitioners, but also a new perspective for people pondering on fundamental questions of philosophy, physics and sociology in general.