{"id":10032,"date":"2025-06-13T14:44:50","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T18:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/?p=10032"},"modified":"2025-07-02T16:40:22","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T20:40:22","slug":"collectanea-24-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/13\/collectanea-24-25\/","title":{"rendered":"Collectanea 24.25 Vacui-Editors-Proximity"},"content":{"rendered":"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 7<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span>\n

Week of June 9, 2025<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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Figure 1. Hisstilla (Northern black racer or Eastern rat snake, she won’t say) sunning in the Catalpa tree, back edge of the holler, a few steps away from the Phone of the Wind and in-progress Stick Henge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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Horror Vacui \ud83d\udd73\ufe0f<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

“At Physics<\/em> IV, 8, 216a26-7, Aristotle cracks a joke. It is one of the relatively few deliberate jokes in the corpus, and its occurrence here is not without significance. Aristotle in these chapters is arguing against those who believe in the existence of the void, or vacuum, or empty space; he says, ‘even if we consider it on its own merits the so-called vacuum will be found to be really vacuous.’2<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be sure, this is not a very funny joke; what is interesting about it, though, is that it underlines the general attitude of dismissive flippancy that seems to run through Aristotle’s consideration of the void.
He seems to refuse to take the hypothesis of the void at all seriously. He never argues directly<\/em> that the void does not or cannot exist,3<\/sup> but contents himself with criticizing the arguments that other thinkers had advanced in its favour. And even this criticism seems disorganized4<\/sup> and strawmannish\u2014it doesn’t really meet these thinkers on their own terms; moreover, it is heavily bound up with Aristotle’s peculiar views about the phenomena and laws of motion.5<\/sup> One comes away with an uneasy feeling that the problem itself has not been addressed, that Aristotle has been unable or unwilling to give his real reasons for disliking the void; it seems almost as though he suffers from an irrational aversion to the void, a neurotic horror vacui<\/em>, and will clutch at straws to refute it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014John Thorp<\/a>. (1990). \u201cAristotle’s<\/em> Horror Vacui1<\/sup>. Canadian Journal of Philosophy<\/em>, 20(2), 149\u2013166. #emptiness #vacuum #void #clearings <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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CCC<\/em> Editors<\/h4>\n\n\n\n