[wastewaste]

In my humble opinion, Nihilism is the philosophical base for everything else. "fall back on" would be suitable. Point in case, the empty set is the initial element of set theory, as zero is the first element of the natural numbers, the identity element of addition. Without it, there is no equallity, no half order (and thus no order?). Horror Vacuui is very real though (fear of emptiness), the zero set is isomorphic to the one-structure, the terminal structure of structural homomorphism (if I remember correctly) as in the null element of multiplication.