Aristotle and Theological Controversy Over Nothingness

I hadn't any idea before reading J.D. Barrow's 'The Book of Nothing' of the historically volatile issues surrounding the controversial question of could a vacuum exist or not-who would have thought?

Evidently the question of the existence or non-existence of a vacuum-of real empty space such as today one might regard the mass of the Universe to exist in, has drawn along not only scientific opinions to opposing sides but theological sides as well.

Aristotle seems to have believed that empty space could not really exist and locate such as might beyond the Universe surrounding it in a meta-universal cosmic void. Fair enough. Theologians over time were silly enough to be drawn into the issue believing that nothing could not exist because it might imply some sort of inability of God to control something (or nothing). That is, nothing could not really exist as that would mean that there was some part of the creation called nothingness beyond the power of God. Theologians believed that nothing is not beyond the power of God (or maybe that describes atheists today better), or rephrased, that everything including nothing is within the power of God. Barrow points out that word games and poems also evolved around the theories of nothing.

It is the scientific dialectic involving research into vacuums and barometric pressure that stimulated science and philosophical speculation too. Torricelli, Pascal and Descartes were at time advocates of different paradigms, yet material researches led to inferences about the nature of the environment for themselves with a decrease in theological conformity in an Aristotelian paradigm.

Does a true vacuum exist with nothing in it? Perhaps not in this Universe with its emergence of virtual particles, passage of neutrinos and a pervasive gravity field.

Perhaps the apparent vacuum in 3 dimensions of space is suffused with six extra, smaller dimensions and a field of quantum energy as strings or brane fields. Goodness, the appearance of a vacuum may again be a four dimensional interpretation in human cognitive context of the Universe's distribution of power.

Without air mice and men perish in a vacuum. Without caloric action mass dies down toward the absolute zero direction eventually. Maybe the low state of comparative pressure and absence of mass comparatively provides a pragmatic rather than a philosophical vacuum yet those are the sorts of things one needs for practical knowledge of the 'weather' conditions of the Universe.

A James Webb space telescope may provide more answers to questions about the deep structure of the Universe so we don't need to rely on just scientific sectarianism as a kind of post-Aristotelian scientology for making intuitive judgments about the 'weather' within and without the Universe.

Today, with political progress in Washington D.C., if one feels strongly pro or con on theological or scientological opinions of the void, space-time unification, or empty space one may freely march to support or protest nothing or something about nothing without fear of political or economic reprisal-especially if unemployed. For now, nothing is safe for moral conservatives. The radical chic has moved on to other areas such as biology, atheism, abortion, homosexuality and concentrating wealth as its extremist global agenda.