“I’m going to show you two kinds of nothing. The first is a small patch of space, way, way out in the universe, remote from everything, with nothing in it, no stars, no planets, no bits of dust, no debris, no atoms, not even one. It’s as empty as empty can be. And next, I’m going to show you a painting. Except it isn’t a painting, it’s a canvas, on which you see…absolutely nothing. No marks, no paint, no human gesture. It, too, is totally empty. It was made by the American artist Robert Rauschenberg.”