Fromnull +-i- +-verse, coined byWilliam James.
nulliverse (pluralnulliverses)
- (philosophy) The world, regarded as having no rationality or rules.
1882 April,William James, “On Some Hegelisms”, inMind[1], volume VII, number 1, page192:If the world cannot be rational in my sense, in the sense of unconditional surrender, I refuse to grant that it is rational at all. It is pure incoherence, a chaos, anulliverse, to whose haphazard sway I will not truckle.
1909,William James,A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures to Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy[2], Longmans, Green, and Company, page68:If rationality be in it at all, it must be in it throughout ; if irrationality be in it anywhere, that also must pervade it throughout. It must be wholly rational or wholly irrational, pure universe or pure multiverse or purenulliverse ; and reduced to this violent alternative, no one's choice ought long to remain doubtful.
1969 August 2,John Updike, “Books: Van Loves Ada, Ada Loves Van”, inThe New Yorker[4], volume45, number24, page67:Now, why should an author not create a “nulliverse” to represent “oneirologically” the contents of his own mind?
2004, Donald Gardner, Suzanne Jill Levine (tr.),Three Trapped Tigers[5], Dalkey Archive Press, translation ofTres Tristes Tigres byGuillermo Cabrera Infante, published1967, page480:... one of the infinite seas that swim in a bubble of a phenomenal ocean where there are no longer any stars because the stars have lost their name: thenulliverse, and wondering if Bustrófedon's sentity was expanding multiversally, ...
2012,Charles Stross,Cory Doctorow,The Rapture of the Nerds[6], Tor Books, page291:And Huw is abruptly ejected from whatever pocketnulliverse the Prophet’s fifth column have installed in the lobby of the virtual Tripoli Mariott, to a destination even more profoundly alienating than the cloud itself.
