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Ideas for '67: Platonic Questions', 'Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles' and 'fragments/reports'

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2 ideas

27. Natural Reality / C. Space / 1. Void
The void can't exist, and without the void there can't be movement or separation [Parmenides, by Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Some philosophers thought what is must be one and immovable. The void, they say, is not: but unless there is a void what is cannot be moved, nor can it be many, since there is nothing to keep things apart.
     From: report of Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 325a06
     A reaction: Somehow this doesn't seem very persuasive any more! I suppose we would distinguish various degrees of void, and assert the existence of sufficient void to allow movement and separation. We must surely agree that total nothingness doesn't exist.
27. Natural Reality / C. Space / 4. Substantival Space
Absolute space either provides locations, or exists but lacks 'marks' for locations [Alexander,P]
     Full Idea: There are two conceptions of absolute space. In the first, empty space is independent of objects but provides a frame of reference so an object has a location. ..In the second space exists independently, but has no 'marks' into which objects can be put.
     From: Peter Alexander (Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles [1985], 6)
     A reaction: He says that Locke seems to reject the first one, but accept the second one.