Void

Use in the book

Strato is reported as denying void outside the world while allowing it to arise inside. Zeno and his followers place an infinite void outside the world but none within it. The atomist report distinguishes the void’s unlimited extent from the infinite number of atoms.

Places to read

1. I.18.1bStrato allows void within the world but denies it outside.
2. I.18.1dZeno’s followers distinguish void from occupied place and partly occupied space.
3. I.18.1a.3Void is infinite in extent in the atomist report.

Translation in this edition

“Void” identifies the philosophical object of discussion; “empty” remains appropriate where the word functions adjectivally. An everyday empty vessel and a space wholly without body are not assumed identical.

Use in the book

The aesthetic comparison of music with architecture pairs silence and rests with voids and solids. Emptiness here is an arranged interval that helps produce pleasure, not sheer deficiency. An imagined world outside the actual world also supplies empty space in which illusions can be placed. In the balloon hypothesis, the universe could shrink back to an atom in the void. Its status as a hypothesis matters: the analogy is a speculative picture, not an asserted physical history.

Places to read

1. I, p. 83, entry 7, ¶1Architectural voids function like musical silences.
2. I, p. 474, entry 5, ¶1Empty space offers room for imagined marvels.
3. I, p. 152, entry 3, ¶2The void receives an atom within an explicitly named hypothesis.

Translation in this edition

The English translation uses “voids” and “empty space” according to context. Latin vide is translated “See” in many later references, and is not evidence for the French concept of emptiness.

Use in the book

B 13 joins two denials: no part of the All is empty, and nothing is superfluous. B 14 asks where anything could come from if the All has no empty part. B 172 develops the point by denying both growth of the whole through external addition and its loss through annihilation. The scope is total: the rearrangements of constituents occur within what already is.

A crucial source distinction appears in B 14's note. The pseudo-Aristotelian author cites Empedocles in an argument for a continuous plenum and against motion into something else. That use does not license attributing a universal denial of motion to Empedocles. His own quoted passages repeatedly describe constituents running through one another, circulating, joining, and leaving. The witness's inference and the poet's surviving claim must therefore be kept separate.

The no-void doctrine should also not be used to erase bodily passages in B 842 or B 1002. A channel can be available for the passage of fire or air without being an absolute region of non-being. The clepsydra's mass of air is an especially clear reminder that the apparently unfilled can still contain something effective.

Places to read

1. B 13No part of the All is empty or superfluous.
2. B 14A second denial of emptiness is accompanied by a question about external entry.
3. B 14 (editorial discussion)The local note explains the citing author's anti-motion use of the quotation.
4. B 17.30–35The All can neither acquire something from elsewhere nor lose its constituents absolutely.
5. B 100.9–21Air occupies and obstructs a vessel, illustrating why an apparently empty region need not be nothing.

Translation in this edition

“Plenum” is the lexicon's explanatory heading, while “empty” is the translation's actual word. B 14 is printed under uncertain placement; moving it mentally next to B 13 is a comparison of related evidence, not a recovery of original order.

Use in the book

Theophrastus at A86 §13 explicitly says that Empedocles admits no void whatever, then uses that commitment against a pore theory of perception. If the passages are empty, the theory contradicts the denial; if full, the fitting of like material seems to make perception continuous. The next section adds the problem of displacement when unlike occupants have to leave. These formulations are adversarial tests of the account rather than Empedocles’ own acceptance of empty pores.

At A872 Philoponus first reasons toward void between solid indivisible parts, but elsewhere says that pore-theorists filled passages with finer bodies such as air and thereby differed from void-theorists. The two roles must be separated: an alleged unavoidable consequence of a theory is not identical with what its proponent expressly maintains.

The appendix’s modern commentary also summarizes Lucretius’ criticism that Empedocles denies void while requiring motion. Those subsequent refutation lines are not printed; only the preceding praise-and-fall passage is reproduced. They can therefore be cited here as the edition’s summary of reception, not as an ancient quotation available in this file.

Places to read

1. A 86 §§ 12–13 (polemical)Theophrastus, On the Senses 13. States the denial of void as a premise in an argument against empty perceptual passages.
2. A 86 §§ 14–15 (polemical)Theophrastus, On the Senses 14. Extends the dilemma to the displacement of material from full pores.
3. A 87 (polemical)2Philoponus, On Coming-to-be and Passing-away. Contrasts an inference to empty intervals with the reported use of finer material in occupied passages.
4. Appendix I Lucretius (apparatus)Modern editor, commentary after Lucretius, On the Nature of Things I 734–741. Summarizes an unprinted Epicurean objection linking denial of void with difficulty explaining motion.

Translation in this edition

The edition’s claim that atomism subsequently solved a first-ever theoretical dilemma is a modern historical narrative, not established by these passages. No such priority claim is needed to explain the actual objection.