Read "Of Those Sentiments Concerning Nature with Which Philosophers Were Delighted" by Plutarch online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
All the natural philosophers from Thales to Plato rejected a vacuum. Empedocles says that there is nothing of a vacuity in nature, nor any thing superabundant. Leucippus, Democritus, Demetrius, Metrodorus, Epicurus, that the atoms are infinite in number; and that a vacuum is infinite in magnitude. The Stoics, that within the compass of the world there is no vacuum, but beyond it the vacuum is infinite. Aristotle,[42] that the vacuum beyond the world is so great that the heaven has liberty to breathe into it, for the heaven is fiery.