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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


Starting the book: The Social Logic of Space by Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson. Written in 1984, it has a few comments that are dated and some that have been proven wrong but a couple important statements.

“… The structured information on which the system runs is not carried in the description mechanism but in reality itself in the spatio-temporal world. The programme does not generate reality. Reality generates the programme, one whose description is retrievable, leading to the self-reproduction of the system under generally stable conditions. Thus in effect reality is it’s own programme. The abstract description is built into the material organization of reality, which as a result has some degree of intelligibility.”

“… Every society invests a certain proportion of its material resources not in the biological perpetuation of individuals, but in the reproduction of the global society by means of special biologically irrelevant behaviors which are aimed purely at the enactment of descriptions of the society as a whole...”

Hillier, Bill, and Julienne Hanson. The Social Logic of Space. Cambridge University Press, 1984. doi.org/10.1017/CBO97805115972.

I don't agree that these behaviors are "biologically irrelevant" and the notion of how humans perceive space has been turned on its head since he wrote this but I would call this book an early classic in using complex systems to understand human culture.

@skanman I saw it a long time ago, overcomig prejudous in the English upper classes by being good at sports.


Occationally I run into a paper that links ideas together to form new associations and opens up new levels of inquirey. As a bonus it introduces an exciting technology which I may of heard about before but never realized the usefulness. My interests are running more and more into the general theme of complexity more specifically to the information structure of complexity. I have been influenced greatly by the work of Dr Sarah Imari Walker at ASU. What does this have to do with chairs? Stay tuned, I will end this thread with a written article.

St Clair, James J. H., Zackory T. Burns, Elaine M. Bettaney, Michael B. Morrissey, Brian Otis, Thomas B. Ryder, Robert C. Fleischer, Richard James, and Christian Rutz. “Experimental Resource Pulses Influence Social-Network Dynamics and the Potential for Information Flow in Tool-Using Crows.” Nature Communications 6, no. 1 (November 3, 2015): 1–8. doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8197.

@barefootstache learning for sure, dogs are not the greatest tool makers though, I knew a dog that would carry a rock around with him all day, I guess you could stretch that to be an artifact.


A chair is what is called an embodied artifact, an extention of the human body. The idea of a chair is a design, a set of instructions, and a period of training and experience, partly held in human memory, partly offloaded to other storage. Animals create and use artifacts/tools also. How are the ideas of these artifacts stored by animals?

Smardzewski, Jerzy. “Antropotechnical Aspects of Furniture Design.” Drvna Industrija 60, no. 1 (2009): 73.

@admitsWrongIfProven Ah, didn't know about the name. Good name but here, not enough room in the cemetery.

@Pat Bird Consrellations, they are searching for the Swan.

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