this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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xkcd

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Depending on what exactly you mean, you might be onto something referred to as structural realism in the philosophy of science. Citing from the intro of the wikipedia article:

In the philosophy of science, structuralism (also known as scientific structuralism or as the structuralistic theory-concept) asserts that all aspects of reality are best understood in terms of empirical scientific constructs of entities and their relations, rather than in terms of concrete entities in themselves.

For those who want to read more, there is also an article on the SEP (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), and books like "Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized" by James Ladyman and Don Ross (2007) or "How is Quantum Field Theory Possible?" by Sunny Auyang (1995).

In particular, your "nothing exists" reminds me of this in "Every Thing Must Go":

a first approximation to our metaphysics is: ‘There are no things. Structure is all there is.’