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Parmenides suggested that void being the lack of being cannot be and cannot be theorised, from his On Nature:

Come now, I will tell thee - and do thou hearken to my saying and carry it away - the only two ways of search that can be thought of. The first, namely, that It is, and that it is impossible for anything not to be, is the way of. conviction, for truth is its companion.. The other, namely, that It is not, and that something must needs not be, - that, I tell thee, is a wholly untrustworthy path. For you cannot know what is not - that is impossible - nor utter it;

Now properties are traditionally ascribed to something that exists, or an abstract notion of such, say substances; and on the face of it cannot be ascribed to Void. Is this affirmed by Aristotle?

Tim Crane, argues:

by contrasting existence with non-existence, and contrasting the kinds of properties existing and non-existing things have. He rejects the claim, deriving from Descartes and Malebranche, that nothingness can have no properties, and instead he will argue that non-existing things can only have properties of one distinctive kind.

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  • Space (empty space) can be curved due to gravity, according to relativity.
    – Trylks
    Sep 26, 2013 at 11:55
  • @Trylks: yes, but space itself is a something not nothing. Sep 26, 2013 at 13:17
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    Clearly, the void has the property of not being anything :)
    – Lukas
    Sep 26, 2013 at 17:27
  • Are we speaking about void as in vacuum or as in nothingness? I'm guessing (now) it is the second, hence my new answer :)
    – Trylks
    Sep 26, 2013 at 19:14

1 Answer 1

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Nothingness has no dimensions, no properties. We cannot say that it is red, or it is warm, or it is anything, because it is nothing, it is not. Nothingness doesn't be. AFAIK, this is how we define this always fictional no-thing since the times of Aristotle, although he didn't use English (obviously).

Logically we can conclude that if nothingness doesn't be, for this to happen or to prevent this from happening then something must be. But I have to admit I'm a bit confused here. I did actually post another question.

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