Otto Von Guericke - Nature of Space and The Possibility of The Void

Nature of Space and The Possibility of The Void

Book II of the Experimenta Nova is an extended philosophical essay in which von Guericke puts forward a view of the nature of Space similar to that later espoused by Newton. He is explicitly critical of the plenist views of Aristotle and of their adoption by his younger contemporary Descartes. A particular and repeated target of his criticism is the manner in which the "nature abhors a vacuum" principle had migrated from simply a matter of experiment to a high principle of physics which could be invoked to explain phenomena such as suction but which itself was above question. In setting out his own view, von Guericke, while acknowledging the influence of previous philosophers such as Lessius (but not Gassendi), makes it clear that he considers his thinking on this topic to be original and new. There is no evidence that von Guericke was aware of the "Nouvelles Experiences touchant le vide" of Blaise Pascal published in 1647. In the Experimenta Nova Book III Ch. 34 he relates how he first became aware of Torricelli's mercury tube experiment from Valerianus Magnus at Regensburg in 1654. Pascal's work built upon reports of the mercury tube experiment which had reached Paris via Marin Mersenne in 1644. An indication of the unresolved status of the "nature abhors a vacuum" principle at that time may be taken from Pascal's opinion, expressed in the conclusion of the Nouvelles Experiences, when he writes: "I hold for true the maxims set out below : (a) that all bodies possess a repugnance to being separated one from another and from admitting a vacuum in the interval between them - that is to say that nature abhors a void." Pascal goes on to claim that this abhorrence of a void is however a limited force and thus that the creation of a vacuum is possible.

There were three broad currents of opinion from which von Guericke dissented. Firstly there was the Aristotelian view that there simply was no void and that everything that exists objectively is in the category of substance. An Aristotelian could take a position on the spectrum between the view that the non-existence of the void was just a brute fact (like the non-existence of unicorns) or it was a high principle of physics (like conservation of energy). Aristotle's general position remains attractive to people of a positivist turn of mind, inclined to laying about them with Occam's razor. The general plenist position lost credibility in the 17th century, owing primarily to the success of Newtonian mechanics. It was revived again in the 19th century as a theory of an all pervading aether and again lost plausibility with the success of Special Relativity. Secondly, there was the Augustinian position of an intimate relation between space time and matter; all three, according to St. Augustine in the Confessions and the City of God, came into being as a unity and ways of speaking that purport to separate them - such as "outside the universe" or "before the beginning of the universe" are, in fact, meaningless. Augustine's way of thinking is also attractive to many and seems to have a strong resonance with General Relativity. The third view, which von Guericke discusses at length, but does not attribute to any individual, is that Space is a creation of the human Imagination. Thus it is not truly objective in the sense that matter is objective. The later theories of Leibniz and Kant seem inspired by this general outlook, but the denial of the objectivity of Space has not been scientifically fruitful.

Von Guericke sidestepped the vexed question of the meaning of "nothing" by asserting that all objective reality fell into one of two categories - the created and the uncreated. Space and Time were objectively real but were uncreated, whereas matter was created. In this way he created a new fundamental category alongside Aristotle's category of substance, that of the uncreated. His understanding of Space is theological and similar to that expressed by Newton in the Scholium to the Principia. For instance, von Guericke writes (Book II Chapter VII) "For God cannot be contained in any location, nor in any vacuum, nor in any space, for He Himself is, of His nature, location and vacuum."