#originoflife #informationtheory #ComplexSystems #CollectiveBehavior #evolutionarydynamics #biogels #informationtheory #philosophy #philosophyofscience #philosophyofmaths #qotojournal #fluidmechanics #turbulence
#horrorvacui
Does Nature abhor a vacuum? Called _horror vacui_ in Latin, the idea originally came from Aristotle. If you put a cylinder with a plunger in water and pull back the plunger, the cylinder will fill with water. According to Aristotle, the water follows the plunger because it is afraid of creating a vacuum. The Italian mathematician, Evangelista Torricelli 1606 - 1647 showed this is not true with the following experiment. Take a glass and put it underwater in a basin until it fills up. Turn the glass over and pull it up out of the water's surface so that the bottom of the glass is just below the surface of the basin water. There will be an empty space at the top of the glass. Called at the time, "Torricelli's Emptiness" it is a real vacuum. The reason for this emptiness is pressure, formalized around the same time by Blaise Pascal. So Nature does not abhor a vacuum, Nature creates a vacuum. So why do we still say this? Is it more correct to say that human nature abhors a vacuum?
"A History and Philosophy of Fluid Mechanics" G.A. Tokaty, Dover, 1971
Unanswered questions form a vacuum. Torricelli and Aristotle and the rest of science feel the pressure to fill the vacuum with answers. I think that nature has a love/hate relationship with vacuums – it loves them so much that, when allowed to, it rushes toward the vacuum, but in so doing destroys it. Scientists love it when they can answer a question of nature, but what will scientists do when all of the questions of nature are answered? I think they will hate it.
