When men began to think about the nature of "space," they thought of it as an all-pervading ether or as some sort of container. Since a thing can move from one part of space to another, it seemed that there was something, a place or a part of space, to be distinguished from the material objects that occupy space. For this reason places might be thought of as different parts of a very subtle jellylike medium within which material bodies are located.

History of the Concept of Space

Some of the Pythagoreans seem to have identified empty space with air. For more special metaphysical reasons Parmenides and Melissus also denied that there could be truly empty space. They thought that empty space would be nothing at all, and it seemed to them a contradiction to assert that a nothing could exist. On the other hand, there seems to...