The concept of matter is necessary to understand ideas of objects, physicality, and concreteness. But it is impossible to define matter without invoking emptiness—a void, a vacuum, or empty space. Quantum physics has revealed that the atoms that make up ‘solid’ matter consist of dense nuclei, which are surrounded by vast spaces between these nuclei and the electrons orbiting them. It is impossible, therefore, to describe a material object without recognizing that it largely comprises emptiness rather than matter. This seemingly paradoxical relationship between matter and emptiness is central to quantum theory, underscoring its description of phenomena such as wave-particle duality, quantum vacuum state and its fluctuations, the uncertainty principle, and field theory. Beyond the realm of physics, this philosophical conundrum concerning matter/emptiness is foundational to a variety of ancient cosmologies, as the centuries-long debates between various strands of Buddhism and Taoism suggest.

Just as mathematician Georg Cantor (1845–1918) produced a structure for numbers that corresponded with and described entities of infinities—thus demonstrating the diversity of the concept of ‘infinity’—philosophical approaches to emptiness can help to fertilize the void. In this talk, philosopher and physicist Sundar Sarukkai explores the extended meanings—as well as the limitations—of the unique vocabulary of the quantum world, exploring its relation to philosophical and artistic concepts, as well as their references within ‘everyday’ contexts. Sarukkai proposes that the idea of the void calls attention to the uncertainty of the epistemological project as well as the boundaries of ontology. Art, he suggests, is one manifestation of this great churning of uncertainty that seems to be foundational to both quantum theory and human existence. Uncertainty is not merely about empirical phenomena relating to position and momentum; reducing uncertainty, as Heisenberg’s principle does, to just technical physics may in turn flatten the experience of being in the world. In this sense, physical objects, social formations, and ultimately the very idea of the subjective self, are to some extent ‘uncertain’. Sarukkai’s keynote explores these blurred edges between what something is and what something isn’t, as an invitation to hold space for uncertainty.