ABSTRACT
The argument that the void is necessary as a condition of locomotion was one which had been prominent in Greek thought, and Aristotle had subjected it to careful analysis, showing the intimate connection between the concepts of to kenon, the void, and topos, place. This connection became crucial in the sixteenth-century reconsideration of the philosophical implications of the concept of locomotion or change of place. The supporters of the concept of the void, Aristotle said, held that the void is the cause or condition of locomotion as being that in which movement occurs. The majority of thinkers rejected the possibility of void space. Differences of view regarding the void prevailed also among those early seventeenth-century thinkers, Daniel Sennert, Gorlaeus, and Basso, who we had earlier seen to have become strong proponents of atomism. Gorlaeus, too, was directly influenced by Scaliger, not only rejecting the Aristotelian conception of place, but following Julius Caesar Scaliger also in identifying place with void.
