philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

and early

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

, ''horror vacui'' ( Latin: ''horror of the vacuum'') or plenism ()—commonly stated as "nature abhors a vacuum", for example by Spinoza—is a hypothesis attributed to

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

, later criticized by the atomism of

Epicurus Epicurus (, ; ; 341–270 BC) was an Greek philosophy, ancient Greek philosopher who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy that asserted that philosophy's purpose is to attain as well as to help others attain tranqui ...

and

Lucretius Titus Lucretius Carus ( ; ; – October 15, 55 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the philosophical poem '' De rerum natura'', a didactic work about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, which usually is t ...

, that nature contains no vacuums because the denser surrounding material continuum would immediately fill the rarity of an incipient void. Aristotle also argued against the void in a more abstract sense: since a void is merely nothingness, following his teacher

Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...

, nothingness cannot rightly be said to exist. Furthermore, insofar as a void would be featureless, it could neither be encountered by the senses nor could its supposition lend additional explanatory power. Hero of Alexandria challenged the theory in the first century AD, but his attempts to create an artificial vacuum failed. The theory was debated in the context of 17th-century

fluid mechanics Fluid mechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the mechanics of fluids (liquids, gases, and plasma (physics), plasmas) and the forces on them. Originally applied to water (hydromechanics), it found applications in a wide range of discipl ...

, by

Thomas Hobbes Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679) was an English philosopher, best known for his 1651 book ''Leviathan (Hobbes book), Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory. He is considered t ...

and Robert Boyle, among others, and through the early 18th century by Sir Isaac Newton and

Gottfried Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (or Leibnitz; – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who is credited, alongside Isaac Newton, Sir Isaac Newton, with the creation of calculus in ad ...

Origin

As advanced by Aristotle in ''Physics'':

Etymology

Plenism means "fullness", from Latin plēnum, English "plenty", cognate via Proto-Indo-European to "full". In

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

, the term for the void is τὸ κενόν (''to kenón'').

History

The idea was restated as ''"Natura abhorret vacuum"'' by François Rabelais in his series of books titled Gargantua and Pantagruel in the 1530s. The theory was supported and restated by

Galileo Galilei Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly referred to as Galileo Galilei ( , , ) or mononymously as Galileo, was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a poly ...

in the early 17th century as ''"Resistenza del vacuo"''. Galileo was surprised by the fact that water could not rise above a certain level in an aspiration tube in his suction pump, leading him to conclude that there is a limit to the phenomenon.

René Descartes René Descartes ( , ; ; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and Modern science, science. Mathematics was paramou ...

proposed a plenic interpretation of atomism to eliminate the void, which he considered incompatible with his concept of space. The theory was rejected by later scientists, such as Galileo's pupil Evangelista Torricelli, who repeated his experiment with mercury.

Blaise Pascal Blaise Pascal (19June 162319August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic Church, Catholic writer. Pascal was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. His earliest ...

successfully repeated Galileo's and Torricelli's experiment and foresaw no reason why a perfect vacuum could not be achieved in principle.Blaise Pascal, ''Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide.'' ew experiments with the vacuum(1647). Scottish philosopher

Thomas Carlyle Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher. Known as the "Sage writing, sage of Chelsea, London, Chelsea", his writings strongly influenced the intellectual and artistic culture of the V ...

mentioned Pascal's experiment in the '' Edinburgh Encyclopædia'' in an 1823 article titled "Pascal".

References

{{Aristotelianism Obsolete theories in physics Vacuum de:Horror vacui

Origin

Etymology

History

See also

References