# ab nihilo



## Huda

Please help me.
Would anyone please tell me what "ab nihilo" means in the following context and is it a French expression? This text is excerpted from Digital Sociology which is edited by Kate Orton-Johnson and Nick Prior, chapter 6: Afterword: Digital Spaces, Sociology and Surveillance. 

In social media worlds the outcomes are not predetermined but they do depend on the activities of users in conjunction with the sort of tech-agency (through software) described by Burrows and Beer. And, importantly, they are never innocent. Thus, the mantra of ‘user-generated content’ has to be understood not as some free creation ab nihilo but framed and even in part constituted by codes of commerce, entertainment and government.


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## bearded

Huda said:


> free creation ab nihilo


In Latin, _ab nihilo _means ''from nothing''.  I would interpret 'free creation ab nihilo' as a fully new creation completely independent of all the rest, i.e. coming from nothing or from nowhere.
I don't think the expression has anything to do with the French language.


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## Huda

bearded said:


> In Latin, _ab nihilo _means ''from nothing''.  I would interpret 'free creation ab nihilo' as a fully new creation completely independent of all the rest, i.e. coming from nothing or from nowhere.
> I don't think the expression has anything to do with the French language.


 
Thank you very much.


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## Snodv

As "ex nihilo" this phrase was once the root of a philosophical controversy between those who believed and those who denied that there was such a thing as creation of something out of nothing.


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## Huda

Snodv said:


> As "ex nihilo" this phrase was once the root of a philosophical controversy between those who believed and those who denied that there was such a thing as creation of something out of nothing.


What's the relation of what you said with ab nihilo?


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## Snodv

_Ab nihilo_ from your quote and _ex nihilo _from philosophy  mean essentially the same thing.  _Ab_ simply  means "from" and _ex_ means "out of," and they are synonymous here:  made from nothing = made out of nothing.


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## Huda

Thank you all. I really appreciate your help.


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