in it.
Obviously then a thing cannot be in itself primarily.
Zeno's problem-that if Place is something it must be in something-is
not difficult to solve. There is nothing to prevent the first place
from being 'in' something else-not indeed in that as 'in' place, but
as health is 'in' the hot as a positive determination of it or as the
hot is 'in' body as an affection. So we escape the infinite regress.
Another thing is plain: since the vessel is no part of what is in it
(what contains in the strict sense is different from what is
contained), place could not be either the matter or the form of the
thing contained, but must different-for the latter, both the matter
and the shape, are parts of what is contained.
This then may serve as a critical statement of the difficulties
involved.
4
What then after all is place? The answer to this question may be
elucidated as follows.
Let us take for granted about it the various characteristics which
are supposed correctly to belong to it essentially. We assume then-
(1) Place is what contains that of which it is the place.
(2) Place is no part of the thing.
(3) The immediate place of a thing is neither less nor greater
than the thing.
(4) Place can be left behind by the thing and is separable. In
addition:
(5) All place admits of the distinction of up and down, and each
of the bodies is naturally carried to its appropriate place and
rests there, and this makes the place either up or down.
Having laid these foundations, we must complete the theory. We ought
to try to make our investigation such as will render an account of
place, and will not only solve the difficulties connected with it, but
will also show that the attributes supposed to belong to it do
really belong to it, and further will make clear the cause of the
trouble and of the difficulties about it. Such is the most
satisfactory kind of exposition.
First then we must understand that place would not have been thought
of, if there had not been a special kind of motion, namely that with
respect to place. It is chiefly for this reason that we suppose the
heaven also to be in place, because it is in constant movement. Of
this kind of change there are two species-locomotion on the one hand
and, on the other, increase and diminution. For these too involve
variation of place: what was then in this place has now in turn
changed to what is larger or smaller.
Again, when we say a thing is 'moved', the predicate either (1)
belongs to it actually, in virtue of its own nature, or (2) in
virtue of something conjoined with it. In the latter case it may be
either (a) something which by its own nature is capable of being
moved, e.g. the parts of the body or the nail in the ship, or (b)
something which is not in itself capable of being moved, but is always
moved through its conjunction with something else, as 'whiteness' or
'science'. These have changed their place only because the subjects to
which they belong do so.
We say that a thing is in the world, in the sense of in place,
because it is in the air, and the air is in the world; and when we say
it is in the air, we do not mean it is in every part of the air, but
that it is in the air because of the outer surface of the air which
surrounds it; for if all the air were its place, the place of a
thing would not be equal to the thing-which it is supposed to be,
and which the primary place in which a thing is actually is.
When what surrounds, then, is not separate from the thing, but is in
continuity with it, the thing is said to be in what surrounds it,
not in the sense of in place, but as a part in a whole. But when the
thing is separate and in contact, it is immediately 'in' the inner
surface of the surrounding body, and this surface is neither a part of
the extremities of things which touch are coincident.
Further, if one body is in continuity with another, it is not
moved in that but with that. On the other hand it is moved in that
if it is separate. It makes no difference whether what contains is
moved or not.
Again, when it is not separate it is described as a part in a whole,
as the pupil in the eye or the hand in the body: when it is
separate, as the water in the cask or the wine in the jar. For the
hand is moved with the body and the water in the cask.
It will now be plain from these considerations what place is.
There are just four things of which place must be one-the shape, or
the matter, or some sort of extension between the bounding surfaces of
the containing body, or this boundary itself if it contains no
extension over and above the bulk of the body which comes to be in it.
Three of these it obviously cannot be:
(1) The shape is supposed to be place because it surrounds, for
the extremities of what contains and of what is contained are
coincident. Both the shape and the place, it is true, are
boundaries. But not of the same thing: the form is the boundary of the
thing, the place is the boundary of the body which contains it.
(2) The extension between the extremities is thought to be
something, because what is contained and separate may often be changed
while the container remains the same (as water may be poured from a
vessel)-the assumption being that the extension is something over
and above the body displaced. But there is no such extension. One of
the bodies which change places and are naturally capable of being in
contact with the container falls in whichever it may chance to be.
If there were an extension which were such as to exist independently
and be permanent, there would be an infinity of places in the same
thing. For when the water and the air change places, all the
portions of the two together will play the same part in the whole
which was previously played by all the water in the vessel; at the
same time the place too will be undergoing change; so that there
will be another place which is the place of the place, and many places
will be coincident. There is not a different place of the part, in
which it is moved, when the whole vessel changes its place: it is
always the same: for it is in the (proximate) place where they are
that the air and the water (or the parts of the water) succeed each
other, not in that place in which they come to be, which is part of
the place which is the place of the whole world.
(3) The matter, too, might seem to be place, at least if we consider
it in what is at rest and is thus separate but in continuity. For just
as in change of quality there is something which was formerly black
and is now white, or formerly soft and now hard-this is just why we
say that the matter exists-so place, because it presents a similar
phenomenon, is thought to exist-only in the one case we say so because
what was air is now water, in the other because where air formerly was
there a is now
water. But the matter, as we said before, is neither
separable from the thing nor contains it, whereas place has both
characteristics.
Well, then, if place is none of the three-neither the form nor the
matter nor an extension which is always there, different from, and
over and above, the extension of the thing which is displaced-place
necessarily is the one of the four which is left, namely, the boundary
of the containing body at which it is in contact with the contained
body. (By the contained body is meant what can be moved by way of
locomotion.)
Place is thought to be something important and hard to grasp, both
because the matter and the shape present themselves along with it, and
because the displacement of the body that is moved takes place in a
stationary container, for it seems possible that there should be an
interval which is other than the bodies which are moved. The air, too,
which is thought to be incorporeal, contributes something to the
belief: it is not only the boundaries of the vessel which seem to be
place, but also what is between them, regarded as empty. Just, in
fact, as the vessel is transportable place, so place is a non-portable
vessel. So when what is within a thing which is moved, is moved and
changes its place, as a boat on a river, what contains plays the
part of a vessel rather than that of place. Place on the other hand is
rather what is motionless: so it is rather the whole river that is
place, because as a whole it is motionless.
Hence we conclude that the innermost motionless boundary of what
contains is place.
This explains why the middle of the heaven and the surface which
faces us of the rotating system are held to be 'up' and 'down' in
the strict and fullest sense for all men: for the one is always at
rest, while the inner side of the rotating body remains always
coincident with itself. Hence since the light is what is naturally
carried up, and the heavy what is carried down, the boundary which
contains in the direction of the middle of the universe, and the
middle itself, are down, and that which contains in the direction of
the outermost part of the universe, and the outermost part itself, are
up.
For this reason, too, place is thought to be a kind of surface,
and as it were a vessel, i.e. a container of the thing.
Further, place is coincident with the thing, for boundaries are
coincident with the bounded.
5
If then a body has another body outside it and containing it, it
is in place, and if not, not. That is why, even if there were to be
water which had not a container, the parts of it, on the one hand,
will be moved (for one part is contained in another), while, on the
other hand, the whole will be moved in one sense, but not in
another. For as a whole it does not simultaneously change its place,
though it will be moved in a circle: for this place is the place of
its parts. (Some things are moved, not up and down, but in a circle;
others up and down, such things namely as admit of condensation and
rarefaction.)
As was explained, some things are potentially in place, others
actually. So, when you have a homogeneous substance which is
continuous, the parts are potentially in place: when the parts are
separated, but in contact, like a heap, they are actually in place.
Again, (1) some things are per se in place, namely every body
which is movable either by way of locomotion or by way of increase
is per se somewhere, but the heaven, as has been said, is not anywhere
as a whole, nor in any place, if at least, as we must suppose, no body
contains it. On the line on which it is moved, its parts have place:
for each is contiguous the next.
But (2) other things are in place indirectly, through something
conjoined with them, as the soul and the heaven. The latter is, in a
way, in place, for all its parts are: for on the orb one part contains
another. That is why the upper part is moved in a circle, while the
All is not anywhere. For what is somewhere is itself something, and
there must be alongside it some other thing wherein it is and which
contains it. But alongside the All or the Whole there is nothing
outside the All, and for this reason all things are in the heaven; for
the heaven, we may say, is the All. Yet their place is not the same as
the heaven. It is part of it, the innermost part of it, which is in
contact with the movable body; and for this reason the earth is in
water, and this in the air, and the air in the aether, and the
aether in heaven, but we cannot go on and say that the heaven is in
anything else.
It is clear, too, from these considerations that all the problems
which were raised about place will be solved when it is explained in
this way:
(1) There is no necessity that the place should grow with the body
in it,
(2) Nor that a point should have a place,
(3) Nor that two bodies should be in the same place,
(4) Nor that place should be a corporeal interval: for what is
between the boundaries of the place is any body which may chance to be
there, not an interval in body.
Further, (5) place is also somewhere, not in the sense of being in a
place, but as the limit is in the limited; for not everything that
is is in place, but only movable body.
Also (6) it is reasonable that each kind of body should be carried
to its own place. For a body which is next in the series and in
contact (not by compulsion) is akin, and bodies which are united do
not affect each other, while those which are in contact interact on
each other.
Nor (7) is it without reason that each should remain naturally in
its proper place. For this part has the same relation to its place, as
a separable part to its whole, as when one moves a part of water or
air: so, too, air is related to water, for the one is like matter, the
other form-water is the matter of air, air as it were the actuality of
water, for water is potentially air, while air is potentially water,
though in another way.
These distinctions will be drawn more carefully later. On the
present occasion it was necessary to refer to them: what has now
been stated obscurely will then be made more clear. If the matter
and the fulfilment are the same thing (for water is both, the one
potentially, the other completely), water will be related to air in
a way as part to whole. That is why these have contact: it is
organic union when both become actually one.
This concludes my account of place-both of its existence and of
its nature.
6
The investigation of similar questions about the void, also, must be
held to belong to the physicist-namely whether it exists or not, and
how it exists or what it is-just as about place. The views taken of it
involve arguments both for and against, in much the same sort of
way. For those who hold that the void exists regard it as a sort of
place or vessel which is supposed to be 'full' when it
holds the
bulk which it is capable of containing, 'void' when it is deprived
of that-as if 'void' and 'full' and 'place' denoted the same thing,
though the essence of the three is different.
We must begin the inquiry by putting down the account given by those
who say that it exists, then the account of those who say that it does
not exist, and third the current view on these questions.
Those who try to show that the void does not exist do not disprove
what people really mean by it, but only their erroneous way of
speaking; this is true of Anaxagoras and of those who refute the
existence of the void in this way. They merely give an ingenious
demonstration that air is something--by straining wine-skins and
showing the resistance of the air, and by cutting it off in
clepsydras. But people really mean that there is an empty interval
in which there is no sensible body. They hold that everything which is
in body is body and say that what has nothing in it at all is void (so
what is full of air is void). It is not then the existence of air that
needs to be proved, but the non-existence of an interval, different
from the bodies, either separable or actual-an interval which
divides the whole body so as to break its continuity, as Democritus
and Leucippus hold, and many other physicists-or even perhaps as
something which is outside the whole body, which remains continuous.
These people, then, have not reached even the threshold of the
problem, but rather those who say that the void exists.
(1) They argue, for one thing, that change in place (i.e. locomotion
and increase) would not be. For it is maintained that motion would