Holes Make a Whole Lot of Difference in the Universe
Holes are really something.
We think there’s nothing to them, but without holes, coffee wouldn’t drip, bread wouldn’t rise, baths wouldn’t bubble, soda wouldn’t fizz. We wouldn’t have lace, cameras or parking meters, vases, beer or bottles to put it in.
A house without holes wouldn’t have windows, chimneys, electric outlets, plumbing. Bodies wouldn’t have eyes or ears. Clothes wouldn’t button. There wouldn’t be basketball, bowling or golf. No volcanoes, no tunnels, no gophers, no caves, no zeros.
A world without holes is inconceivable, and probably impossible. Even the word “impossible” would be impossible without the holes in the letters P, O and B.
Some things--like doughnuts--are even defined by their holes. Topologically speaking, a doughnut is the same as a coffee mug, because both have one hole.
Knots are grouped into families defined by the number of holes created as strings loop around each other. In the knotty 11-dimensional landscapes of string theory, the number of holes is linked to the families of elementary particles.
The person who invented doughnut holes was definitely on to something.
For all their importance, however, “holes are slippery, elusive entities,” say authors Roberto Casati and Achille C. Varzi in their book “Holes and Other Superficialities.” On the one hand, holes seem to be real, like rocks, because they have shape, form and position. We know precisely where a hole resides; it is not some amorphous floating entity, like love.
On the other hand, holes can move. In fact, the motion of holes through the lattice of silicon atoms is the mechanism behind many electronic devices, including computers. The holes are places where electrons are not.
They are absences acting as presences; the holes constitute, in effect, positively charged particles every bit as real as the negatively charged electrons that move in the opposite direction. The information is carried, in other words, by holes.
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So what exactly is a hole? It’s hard to say; even harder, perhaps, to draw. If you’re feeling mischievous, the authors of “Holes” suggest, ask someone: Could you please draw a hole for me? Then sit back and enjoy the confusion.
Is a hole a thing? Or the lack of a thing? Is a hole the stuff inside? The stuff surrounding? Are the holes in screens made of wire or air?
Clearly, a hole does not entirely depend on what surrounds it, because you can make identical holes in earth, in plastic, in concrete. On the other hand, the hole just as clearly isn’t what fills it up; if you stuff your finger into a hole in a dike, it is still a hole--just a filled hole.
It is this very fact that “holes are not made of anything,” say the authors, that puts holes under “a cloud of philosophical suspicion.”
It’s even possible to have holes in nothing. Consider a black hole, for example--made entirely of empty space.
Or particles of antimatter--which are considered holes in the vacuum. Imagine the vacuum as a flat stretch of ground. Particles can appear out of the vacuum so long as they are accompanied by their mirror opposites, or antiparticles.
In the same way, if you dig a hole in the ground, you create not only a hole (the antiparticle), but also a mound of dirt (the particle). If you fill up the hole with the dirt, both the mound and the hole disappear. And when particles and antiparticles meet, the “hole” in the vacuum gets filled, and both particles disappear.
There are even holes in perception. People who suffer from strokes sometimes lose track of an entire limb, or even a side of their body. These absences are more than mere erasures, a place where something is missing. Instead, it’s as if that whole part of the universe has ceased to exist.
Neurologist Oliver Sacks calls this a “hole in consciousness,” just as amnesia is a “hole in memory.”
A hole is a place where things leak out and other things come in--like a door. The pupil in our eye lets in the light that enables you to see. But just as important, it blocks out most of the light so that the eye isn’t blinded.
A hole does double duty: It is a window and a door; it is something and nothing at the same time. “To talk about valleys is, in a sense, to talk about mountains,” say the authors of “Holes.” “But would we eliminate valleys by talking only about mountains?”
In the end, holes are--appropriately enough--holistic. They encompass everything. The hole shebang.
