WEBVTT - Horror Vacui, Part 3 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:05.360 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:14.880 Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:17.680 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:21.040 we're back with part three of our series on Horror 0:00:21.160 --> 0:00:25.480 VAKUI or Fear of the Void, which we have We've 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:28.080 been mainly focusing I think on like art and design 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:31.040 in the past couple of episodes, but today I wanted 0:00:31.120 --> 0:00:34.839 to take a look at the history of the vacuum 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:38.199 and specifically resistance to the idea of the vacuum in 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:44.000 philosophy and physics. And to begin, I was reading about 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:48.240 the scientific history of vacuum physics in a book called 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:52.199 The Void by Frank Close from Oxford University Press in 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:56.000 two thousand seven. Frank Close is a professor of physics 0:00:56.000 --> 0:01:00.400 at at Oxford I think emeritus now, But anyway, I 0:01:00.440 --> 0:01:03.440 was reading about this and he included a quote from 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:05.800 the rig Veda that I thought was very interesting. This 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:09.639 is from the creation Hymn of the rig Veda, which says, 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:14.440 in translation, there was neither non existence nor existence. Then 0:01:14.480 --> 0:01:17.240 there was neither the realm of space nor the sky, 0:01:17.319 --> 0:01:22.520 which is beyond what stirred where and I really like 0:01:22.640 --> 0:01:26.440 this because it I think it encapsulates a kind of, 0:01:27.760 --> 0:01:34.400 uh a fascinated but challenging history of attempts to conceptualize 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:38.400 empty space, to even imagine what empty space would mean 0:01:38.520 --> 0:01:41.520 if it were to exist. Because I noticed kind of 0:01:41.520 --> 0:01:44.880 a gap here. As far as I can tell, most 0:01:44.920 --> 0:01:48.040 people all around the world today, even in various you know, 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:51.800 different cultures, whatever, really, as as far as I can tell, 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:56.920 don't seem to express any major problems making sense of 0:01:56.960 --> 0:02:00.880 the idea of empty space. Obviously, there's a lot we 0:02:00.920 --> 0:02:03.640 don't know about the nature of space. What is space, 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:06.440 where does it come from, what different kinds of space 0:02:06.480 --> 0:02:08.919 could there be, and so forth. So space is still 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:11.680 a vessel of many mysteries. It's not like we've got 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:14.560 it all solved. But if you just simplify the idea 0:02:14.639 --> 0:02:17.959 to the basics, I and I think most people don't 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:22.480 have any problem imagining the concept of an area of 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:26.280 three dimensional space with no particles in it. That just yeah, okay, 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:29.040 that that makes sense as an idea to me. But 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:33.160 if you read about how ancient Greek philosophers wrote about 0:02:33.200 --> 0:02:36.720 this question, I do not get the impression that the 0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:39.920 same was generally true for them, not only did many 0:02:40.000 --> 0:02:44.160 of them deny the possibility of empty space existing. Sometimes 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:46.840 I get the feeling that they are struggling to even 0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:49.840 imagine what the concept would mean. Do Do you know 0:02:49.880 --> 0:02:54.040 what I'm getting out here? Rob, Yeah? Yeah, this, Um, 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:56.359 this is something we talked a little bit about off 0:02:56.360 --> 0:03:00.720 my before the the episode here. Um it's it's it's 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:02.919 it's kind of complicated. I mean at one level, yeah, 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:07.799 they're They're always going to be linguistic possibilities in play. 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:10.160 For example, I was looking into some sources on the 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:14.399 void in Chinese philosophy and you run into, for example, 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:18.239 that they're separate terms for such concepts as emptiness, nothingness, 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:22.720 and the infinite or the absolute and and one source 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:25.760 here is looking at foundling law in Frontiers of Philosophy 0:03:25.760 --> 0:03:28.320 and China from two thousand ten contends that their subtleties 0:03:28.400 --> 0:03:33.000 involved that quote English language is unable to capture. So yeah, 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:36.760 we have to acknowledge linguistic possibilities. But on the other hand, 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:39.600 like thinking about like what is it as a modern human, 0:03:39.720 --> 0:03:42.640 Like why do I like you have no problem imagining 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:47.120 a vacuum um or or even of a void, And 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:49.840 I think part of it maybe like just the mechanical 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:54.240 possibilities that we have now in the media evidence thereof. So, 0:03:54.600 --> 0:03:56.720 for instance, when I think about a perfect vacuum, I 0:03:56.760 --> 0:04:00.680 can I can imagine a device that mechanically makes it 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:03.920 so within say a closed space. I can think back 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:07.400 to footage of someone in a It's not a perfect vacuum, 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:09.320 but a place that has no air, that's sort of vacuum. 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:10.920 Because I guess we get into differences too. Are we 0:04:11.000 --> 0:04:14.760 talking about a space without air um in which say 0:04:15.520 --> 0:04:18.440 a scientist in a suit may drop a feather in 0:04:18.480 --> 0:04:21.680 a bowling ball and do that whole experiment, or are 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:25.600 we talking about something that that is a true vacuum 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:27.599 with nothing in it at all, like a like an 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:31.880 absolute void um. And and there are differences there, but yeah, 0:04:31.880 --> 0:04:35.800 as far as just like maybe it gets into the 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:38.000 idea of imagining a space with air in it. Like, 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:42.080 we we have this clear idea of what atmosphere is 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:46.000 and what air is, and we can also see and 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:49.440 behold and sort of to some degree understand the mechanics 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:51.880 by which that air may be removed from a space. 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:54.360 And therefore you could have a space where the visible 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:57.640 is not present and the invisible has been removed as well. Yeah, 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:00.400 that's a very good point. And I think for like 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:06.680 one major difference, maybe the UH unsettled question of like 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:09.920 whether the air itself has wait for much of human history, 0:05:10.080 --> 0:05:12.080 Like if if you don't have that worked out, it 0:05:12.120 --> 0:05:15.440 may just be harder to imagine what space devoid of 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:18.640 even gas particles would be. Yeah, but I want to 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:21.120 turn into some examples that Frank Close looks at in 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:23.720 this book, especially his his first chapter on sort of 0:05:23.760 --> 0:05:26.880 the ancient history of the void in UH in physics, 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:29.520 to to look at how how this idea was thought 0:05:29.520 --> 0:05:32.919 of before the modern era. So the pre Socratic Greek 0:05:32.960 --> 0:05:37.080 philosopher Thals of Melitas, who lived from the seventh to 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:40.880 the sixth century b c. Writing about the idea of 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:44.839 emptiness or void without substance, is actually kind of tempted 0:05:44.880 --> 0:05:47.720 to ask can there be such a thing as nothing? 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:51.880 If someone is able to think about it, wouldn't thinking 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:55.479 about it mean it was something? And again this raises 0:05:55.520 --> 0:05:59.320 an interesting question for me. I mean, my initial reaction 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:02.680 is just like no, Like, you know, so imagine a 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:05.160 container with empty space in it. I don't think by 0:06:05.160 --> 0:06:07.360 thinking about that we change the nature of what's in 0:06:07.400 --> 0:06:10.599 the container. But this does kind of raise the specter 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:13.839 of like if there could be a vacuum for people 0:06:13.880 --> 0:06:17.640 like Thiley's maybe this has almost more sort of totalizing 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:22.679 cosmic implications that the ability of a vacuum to exist 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:25.840 says something about the universe as a whole, not just 0:06:26.000 --> 0:06:29.000 one region of the universe, say inside of a glass 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:32.600 bottle or something. So that's one level in which I respond. 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:36.560 But then on the other hand, I can sympathize with 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:39.600 thoughts like this knowing some things about modern physics, because 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:43.640 in a very real sense, empty space is I think 0:06:43.680 --> 0:06:45.840 you can make the argument that it is not nothing. 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:49.680 Empty space is something even though it is not matter. 0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:53.600 Uh So this may come from a failure to distinguish 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:58.320 between space and a concept like nothingness, in which case, 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:02.960 like if you're imagining space is something like space has properties, 0:07:03.360 --> 0:07:06.640 then in fact it couldn't be nothing, which is what 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:10.400 Thai Las was thinking about. Yeah, this perhaps distinction between 0:07:10.400 --> 0:07:14.320 nothingness and emptiness. Um, this whole thing about thinking about 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:18.000 it making it maybe less nothing. Um. This reminds me 0:07:18.000 --> 0:07:20.520 of another paper I was looking at, Being in Nothingness 0:07:20.560 --> 0:07:23.280 in Greek and Ancient Chinese philosophy by Ji Ming shin 0:07:23.960 --> 0:07:27.800 philosophy East and West nine. Uh. This author points out 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:31.760 that in both Chinese Taoism and Greek philosophy you see 0:07:31.760 --> 0:07:35.800 this culmination of things and nothingness. Quote, nothingness is the 0:07:35.880 --> 0:07:40.480 nature of being in itself, which is absolutely transcendent and nameless. 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:43.040 So if I'm interpreting this correctly to sort of dual 0:07:43.120 --> 0:07:47.080 identity of nothingness in these two different thoughts systems, nothingness 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:50.800 is ultimately that which comes before substance but also comes 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:55.679 before human attributed meaning. Um So yeah, like even thinking 0:07:55.720 --> 0:07:59.480 of even giving it a name changes the nothingness of 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:04.200 it at least from these perspectives. Yes, though with Greek philosophy, 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:06.760 I know it very much depends on which philosopher you're 0:08:06.760 --> 0:08:10.080 talking about, because a lot of these big Greek philosophers, Uh, 0:08:10.120 --> 0:08:14.080 they were emphatic and specifically rejecting the idea that the 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:16.800 universe could have come from nothingness, that there could ever 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:21.240 have been nothingness, or that the universe would ever disappear 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:24.520 into nothingness like that was specifically uh, part of what 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:28.560 the cosmological history that the Ley's was arguing for. According 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:31.720 to Theiles, it would be impossible for the universe to 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:33.960 have come from nothingness. And it would be impossible for 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:36.840 it to ever become nothing. There's just sort of like 0:08:36.920 --> 0:08:41.200 infinitely the same stuff. Without getting into the exacts of 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:43.360 it all though, when you hear some of these sweeping 0:08:43.520 --> 0:08:47.080 explanations of what, say, the universe would be if it 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:50.360 were reduced to a singularity, you know, uh, that sort 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:54.360 of thing like, that's not nothing, it's something, but it's 0:08:54.400 --> 0:08:58.400 such a strange and alien concept, so different from certainly 0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:01.520 our perceivable reality, that it might as well be nothing. 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:03.640 You know. Yes, that's a good point. And of course, 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:07.480 again to highlight the difference between nothingness and empty space 0:09:07.559 --> 0:09:10.080 and nothingness I think is much harder to define. I 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:13.400 don't know exactly what we mean when we talk about nothingness. 0:09:13.440 --> 0:09:17.760 It's sort of a more uh slippery, mysterious concept, whereas 0:09:17.760 --> 0:09:20.760 empty space. Again, it's not that we understand everything about it, 0:09:20.800 --> 0:09:23.840 but it is something that has physical properties and can 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:27.000 be manipulated. We know some things about it, Yeah, like 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:30.080 even linguistically. When we talk about a vacuum, so we've 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:34.520 formed an artificial vacuum inside of a reinforced steel chamber, 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:38.120 does that steel chamber contain a vacuum and therefore the 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:40.760 vacuum is not nothing because it is a thing by 0:09:40.840 --> 0:09:43.920 virtue of being different from everything surrounding it. Oh, because 0:09:43.920 --> 0:09:48.240 it is contained. Yeah, well that raises another question of um. 0:09:48.280 --> 0:09:51.160 When you ask whether a vacuum exists in nature, I 0:09:51.160 --> 0:09:54.640 mean in reality, whenever we're talking about a vacuum, we're 0:09:54.679 --> 0:10:00.800 talking about essentially low density gas. So and the question 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:03.240 is how low density does the gas have to get 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:06.320 before you are comfortable talking about a region of it 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:08.640 as a vacuum. So like and say that, and we 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:10.360 can come back to this maybe in in the next 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:12.840 part of the series or something. But like an interstellar voids, 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:16.320 there are still particles floating around out there. They're just 0:10:16.520 --> 0:10:19.679 very far apart compared to much closer to stars or 0:10:19.720 --> 0:10:21.959 in the atmosphere of a planet. But I guess the 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:26.520 question would be how far apart does every individual particle 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:29.480 of matter have to get before you say, okay, this 0:10:29.559 --> 0:10:33.400 is really a total vacuum. Mhm. But to come back 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:36.640 to Thailey's for a second, Close makes an interesting argument 0:10:38.240 --> 0:10:42.600 about Thailey's sort of having something in his cosmology similar 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:46.600 to uh to a kind of empty space, basically a 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:50.199 primeval material or a sort of ground state for the universe, 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:54.200 And Close argues that for Thailey's this ground state of 0:10:54.200 --> 0:10:58.920 existence was water. This belief is related to the fact 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:01.520 that we can observe why are going through phase changes, 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:04.680 so we can see water as solid, ice, as liquid 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:08.640 as water, vapor and Close says that the LEAs assumed 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:11.840 that the diversity of forms went on from there, and 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:17.800 in fact water was the basis of every material on Earth. Rocks, plants, air, etcetera. 0:11:17.920 --> 0:11:23.480 Are all somehow water in some some extrapolated form, and 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:26.800 so he writes quote, space for Thaile's is as empty 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:30.200 as it can be when all matter in it has 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:34.480 been turned into its primeval form, liquid water. Like the ocean. 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:38.880 Water thus contains every possible form of matter. I think 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:42.360 we've actually discussed this before. Yeah, in connection to his work, 0:11:42.400 --> 0:11:44.680 like you get down to the idea of a cosmic ocean, 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:48.720 of a primordial ocean on which there is no land 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:53.520 and no being. So there are definitely similarities between imagining, 0:11:53.559 --> 0:11:56.480 say the you know, the gods or the Creator or whatever, 0:11:56.640 --> 0:12:00.520 hovering over a great void and hovering over a gray ocean. 0:12:00.640 --> 0:12:03.920 That those are like similar ideas in some of these 0:12:03.920 --> 0:12:07.760 ancient cosmologies at least, But anyway, going on from there, 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:10.920 in the fifth century b c. There's another pre Socratic 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:15.160 Greek philosopher, Empedicalles, who argued that there were actually four 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:18.640 fundamental forms of matter. Wasn't that everything came from water? 0:12:18.800 --> 0:12:22.480 Like they least thought that there was in fact earth, air, fire, 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:27.240 and water, And empedically Is notably realized that air was 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:31.240 itself a substance and not merely empty space. He also 0:12:31.320 --> 0:12:34.040 believed there was no such thing as empty space. But 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:36.400 of course the discovery that air is not empty space 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:40.200 does not mean that empty space cannot exist. But then 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:43.600 we we come to the atomists, who are very interesting 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:46.800 in their departure from these other ways of thinking. So uh. 0:12:46.840 --> 0:12:51.439 The atomists included a number of ancient philosophers like Lucippus, Democritus, 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:55.960 and Epicurus, who believed, quite remarkably ahead of their time, 0:12:56.040 --> 0:13:00.160 that all matter is actually made up of imperceptible like 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:04.280 tiny particles, which they called atoms from the Greek word 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:08.200 adam moss, which is derived from something that means like 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:12.839 cannot be cut or basically indivisible. Now, of course, today 0:13:12.840 --> 0:13:15.800 we know that atoms are not actually indivisible. They're made 0:13:15.880 --> 0:13:19.320 up of sub atomic particles like protons, neutrons, electrons, and 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:23.560 even protons and neutrons can be further subdivided. But ancient 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:29.040 atomists did not have the experimental apparatus needed to discover this. Instead, 0:13:29.080 --> 0:13:32.280 they arrived at the atomic view of physics primarily by 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:36.199 way of thought, experiments, and everyday empirical observations, such as 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:40.439 the observation of things like the erosion of solid matter 0:13:40.480 --> 0:13:42.520 in nature. So if you have a great, you know, 0:13:42.559 --> 0:13:46.320 a grand marble staircase, and you notice that over the years, 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:50.120 the steps on the staircase are eroding. They're sort of 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:53.120 like sagging in the places where people walk on them. Well, 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:56.240 they're solid marble. Where are they going? How do marble 0:13:56.320 --> 0:13:59.679 steps wear away over the ages? It must be because 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:04.560 each person who steps on them remove some tiny, invisibly 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:08.960 small amount of matter. But that invisibly small amount of matter, 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:11.960 those little atoms that are taken away accumulate over time 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:16.079 and the steps are worn down. But importantly for this discussion, 0:14:16.080 --> 0:14:19.080 the atomists believed that there actually is such a thing 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:21.480 as empty space. In fact, it was core to their 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:25.080 theory that the universe was composed of atoms in motion. 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:29.720 Those atoms in motion needed a space through which to move. 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:34.160 And the atomists argued that if there were already something 0:14:34.760 --> 0:14:37.560 in the place and atom was moving to, the atom 0:14:37.600 --> 0:14:40.600 couldn't move there because then two atoms would be occupying 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:43.800 the same space at once. So there had to be 0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:46.400 such a thing as empty space. That was the only 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:50.560 way that such space could come to be occupied. You know, 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:52.680 there has to be space for things to move into 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:55.600 where nothing can move. But after this we get back 0:14:55.640 --> 0:14:58.480 to Aristotle because uh and we mentioned him at the 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:01.280 beginning of the first episode in this series. For better 0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:04.280 or worse, Aristotle would pretty much have the last word 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:08.160 on this question for centuries to come, until experiments in 0:15:08.160 --> 0:15:12.560 the seventeenth century would strongly challenge his decree. But Aristotle says, 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:15.880 there is no such thing as empty space. Uh. And 0:15:15.920 --> 0:15:20.080 I was reading about the Aristotelian uh framework or foundation 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:24.560 for the science of the early modern period in the 0:15:24.800 --> 0:15:28.720 Cambridge History of Science, volume three, edited by Lindberg at All. 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:31.360 This was in a chapter called Physics and Foundations by 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:36.040 the Princeton philosopher Daniel Garber. And uh. He makes some 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:39.160 interesting points, But reading this chapter, this is the way 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:41.400 I was thinking about it. So when we think of 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:45.520 physics today, we usually think of it as a science 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:48.960 contained within certain boundaries, like there are certain kinds of 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:52.400 questions that are physics questions, and there are other questions 0:15:52.440 --> 0:15:55.760 that are not Physics. Is the study of properties of 0:15:55.800 --> 0:15:58.800 matter and energy something like that, And that's a huge field, 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:00.720 so you can ask tons of stents in it, like 0:16:00.800 --> 0:16:04.360 how are stars formed? Or what is the relationship between 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:08.040 particle mass and the Higgs field. But if in a 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:11.320 physics journal today you tried to submit a paper on 0:16:11.400 --> 0:16:14.920 a question like what are the basic modes of existence? 0:16:15.400 --> 0:16:18.360 And what is being? And what is the relationship of 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:23.440 those uh things to say, God, uh, this would probably 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:26.520 be rejected as outside the scope of the physical sciences, 0:16:26.560 --> 0:16:28.440 you know, like the editors would say, you need to 0:16:28.480 --> 0:16:32.640 submit this to a different journal. However, this attempted limitation 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:36.920 of scope was not always present in fields analogous to physics. 0:16:36.920 --> 0:16:40.520 Throughout history. There are many times in history where these 0:16:40.560 --> 0:16:43.680 things really kind of blend together, or at least, uh 0:16:44.040 --> 0:16:48.600 philosophical foundations are thought to have relevant things to say 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:53.560 about physics theories. So uh, the these these philosophical foundations 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:56.240 might include religious world views, so you can think about 0:16:56.240 --> 0:16:59.960 the way that um, the the scientists of the islam 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:02.440 world in the Middle Ages might have thought of Islam 0:17:02.520 --> 0:17:06.560 as a theological foundation for the sciences, or the way 0:17:06.560 --> 0:17:09.160 that Christian natural philosophers of Europe might have thought about 0:17:09.240 --> 0:17:12.600 Christianity in the same way. But in the West there 0:17:12.680 --> 0:17:17.879 was a major secular philosophical foundation of early science also, 0:17:18.359 --> 0:17:23.119 and that was Aristotelianism, the philosophy of Aristotle, a fourth 0:17:23.160 --> 0:17:26.720 century BC Greek philosopher. And I think it's fair to 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:29.760 say that for like hundreds of years, in the schools 0:17:29.800 --> 0:17:34.240 and universities of of medieval through early modern Europe, the 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:37.840 philosophy of Aristotle was not taught in the way that 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:40.199 it would be taught in a college class today. Like 0:17:40.240 --> 0:17:42.960 today you would teach it like here is an interesting 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:46.480 piece of intellectual history, maybe providing a certain point of 0:17:46.560 --> 0:17:49.840 view and showing the development of how people thought about X, 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:52.560 Y or z. Instead, I think it was often taught 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:54.520 in a way that was closer to how people would 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:57.720 have thought about the Bible. It's like Aristotle said it. 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:00.520 That pretty much settles it. Yeah, So you end up 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:05.000 with with various discussions and arguments coming down to either 0:18:05.040 --> 0:18:09.440 what Aristotle said or disagreements over what Aristotle did say 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:12.000 or meant or what he would have said or meant 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:14.720 about a given topic. Right so, and and to be clear, 0:18:14.800 --> 0:18:18.520 it wasn't always this way. It wasn't that everybody thought 0:18:18.600 --> 0:18:21.880 Aristotle was literally infallible. But it seems to me like 0:18:22.640 --> 0:18:27.520 he was often treated by the scholastics as something approaching infallibility, 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:30.280 like it was just ludicrous to question Aristotle, though in 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:42.840 some cases people did. Thankank thank so, we should discuss 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:46.919 what Aristotle says about the void um. Aristotle denies the 0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:51.560 possibility of the existence of empty space, specifically in his 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:55.399 book Physics Book for and, as is so often true 0:18:55.440 --> 0:18:58.200 with these ancient philosophers, he makes his case for the 0:18:58.240 --> 0:19:01.320 non existence of a vacuum not by like doing an 0:19:01.320 --> 0:19:05.399 experiment and describing it, but by cold, rash eosination. He 0:19:05.520 --> 0:19:08.359 is going to reason his way out of having to 0:19:08.359 --> 0:19:11.679 believe in empty space. Garber, in his chapter quotes a 0:19:11.720 --> 0:19:15.399 translation of Aristotle for one of his arguments along these lines. 0:19:15.760 --> 0:19:22.560 Aristotle says, now it space or place has three dimensions length, breadth, depth, 0:19:22.840 --> 0:19:25.919 the dimensions by which all body is bounded. But the 0:19:26.000 --> 0:19:29.720 place cannot be body, for if it were, there would 0:19:29.720 --> 0:19:32.760 be two bodies in the same place. What in the 0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:36.600 world then are we to suppose place to be and 0:19:36.720 --> 0:19:40.640 the implied answer is nothing. Uh, So not to kind 0:19:40.640 --> 0:19:44.240 of interesting contradiction, It seems to me at least that 0:19:44.720 --> 0:19:47.520 we had the atomists pointing to the fact that two 0:19:47.520 --> 0:19:49.679 objects can't be in the same place at the same 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:53.560 time to prove that there must be empty space, because remember, 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:57.160 moving particles have to have unoccupied space to move into. 0:19:57.600 --> 0:20:00.520 And here Aristotle is using the same ms in a 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:04.080 way to say that space cannot exist independent of matter, 0:20:04.520 --> 0:20:07.240 or else it would have to occupy the same places 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:10.639 matter at the same time. But coming back to close, 0:20:10.760 --> 0:20:14.960 he summarizes Aristotle's arguments by saying, quote, so for Aristotle, 0:20:15.000 --> 0:20:18.680 logic seem to require that empty space cannot be something 0:20:18.840 --> 0:20:22.480 and therefore is non existent. He defined the void as 0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:25.520 where there is no body, and since the basic elements 0:20:25.520 --> 0:20:28.879 of things exist eternally, there can be no place that 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:32.600 is completely empty. Aristotle may have been getting some mileage 0:20:32.600 --> 0:20:36.480 here out of uh confusion over the difference between empty 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:41.000 space as something and like nothingness as as in a 0:20:41.000 --> 0:20:45.439 way meaning non existence. Now. Garber, in his Physics and 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:48.840 Foundations chapter writes that by the thirteenth century, writers in 0:20:48.880 --> 0:20:53.119 the Scholastic tradition in Europe who believed in Aristotelian dogmas 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:57.520 had begun assuming the existence of a natural force known 0:20:57.680 --> 0:21:01.280 as horror vakay, again a phrase that Aristotle himself did 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:04.240 not use, but which aligned with his teaching on this matter, 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:08.000 that nature would not permit a vacuum, and the Scholastic 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:11.439 writers characterized this as a force in nature which prevents 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:14.320 vacuum of from emerging, almost like there's sort of a 0:21:14.359 --> 0:21:17.600 law of nature something going on that will not let 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:22.040 a vacuum be created, and thus forces matter to fill 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:25.240 in the gaps. So you can pump out that container 0:21:25.280 --> 0:21:28.000 as much as you want, but horror vakaye will prevent 0:21:28.119 --> 0:21:31.840 it from actually being empty inside. Uh And and another 0:21:32.000 --> 0:21:34.479 interesting thing I wanted to flag here is that Garber 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:40.600 notes a conflict between this Aristotelian dogma and some religious 0:21:40.720 --> 0:21:43.479 reasoning that arose in the Church in the thirteenth century 0:21:43.520 --> 0:21:48.200 that eventually led to the famous Condemnations of twelve seventy seven, 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:52.520 where we've got a bishop condemning Aristotle. Uh So, to 0:21:52.560 --> 0:21:55.920 read from Garber here, quote, one consequence was that without 0:21:56.080 --> 0:22:00.520 space outside of the finite world, not even God would 0:22:00.560 --> 0:22:02.840 seem to be able to move the universe if he 0:22:02.920 --> 0:22:07.440 chose to do so. This apparent consequence of Aristotelian doctrine 0:22:07.480 --> 0:22:12.240 was rejected in the famous condemnation of Aristotle by Etienne Tempier, 0:22:12.520 --> 0:22:16.000 the Bishop of Paris, in twelve seventy seven uh and 0:22:16.000 --> 0:22:19.240 then quoting in translation, here we can dimn the proposition 0:22:19.280 --> 0:22:22.840 that God could not move the heavens with rectilinear motion, 0:22:23.200 --> 0:22:27.400 and the reason is that a vacuum would remain. So 0:22:27.760 --> 0:22:30.680 Garber says, this really kind of put these scholastic Aristotelians 0:22:30.720 --> 0:22:34.200 in a bind because in some ways they they had 0:22:34.240 --> 0:22:37.639 to defend the possibility of some kind of empty space 0:22:37.800 --> 0:22:41.920 existing in the universe, at least potentially for theological reasons, 0:22:42.280 --> 0:22:45.920 but they didn't want to violate the principles of Aristotle 0:22:45.960 --> 0:22:50.560 to which they were loyal. Mhm. But anyway, going on, 0:22:51.119 --> 0:22:54.119 Frank Close makes an interesting argument that I think I 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:56.280 would agree with it. We shouldn't be too hard on 0:22:56.359 --> 0:23:02.200 the prevailing Aristotelian belief in uh in orvakay because without 0:23:02.240 --> 0:23:05.479 special equipment and experiments, I don't know, it really just 0:23:05.560 --> 0:23:08.520 seems like that from everyday existence, like it seems like 0:23:08.640 --> 0:23:12.760 reality prevents voids from forming. Examples given by the ancient 0:23:12.760 --> 0:23:15.680 philosophers were things like, hey, you suck all the air 0:23:15.720 --> 0:23:18.600 out of an empty wine skin, the wine skin collapses 0:23:18.800 --> 0:23:22.120 like it shrinks in. Removing the air does not result 0:23:22.119 --> 0:23:25.360 in a void inside the skin. It causes the walls 0:23:25.480 --> 0:23:28.439 of the skin to shrink proportional to the amount of 0:23:28.480 --> 0:23:31.320 air you're able to remove. You could also use this 0:23:31.359 --> 0:23:34.399 belief in nature's hatred for the vacuum to explain the 0:23:34.440 --> 0:23:37.680 workings of pumps and siphons. So beyond the fact that 0:23:37.760 --> 0:23:40.919 Aristotle said it, it just kind of seemed right with 0:23:41.000 --> 0:23:44.760 everyday experience. Yeah, I mean again, you're not walking around 0:23:44.760 --> 0:23:48.560 your home and just suddenly walking into a vacuum, right Like, 0:23:48.680 --> 0:23:51.600 even the empty rooms are are full, they're they're teeming 0:23:52.359 --> 0:23:56.240 with with with matter. Uh. And these are I think 0:23:56.240 --> 0:23:58.840 all great examples where you could you can imagine someone saying, 0:23:58.880 --> 0:24:02.520 look proof right here, look at this wine skin. If 0:24:02.560 --> 0:24:04.520 you can form a void in this wide skin, then 0:24:04.520 --> 0:24:08.520 I'll believe you. Otherwise, absolutely not. So while horror Vakay 0:24:08.760 --> 0:24:10.760