Matter and void

In reality, nothing but atoms and the void.

This is the World Wide Website of Daniel Vingo.

If you'd like to contact me, you can email me at dan 'at' danvingo dot com

You can find some of my open source work on GitHub

I’m a software developer living in New York, I use this web address as a playground to host projects and as a place to share some of my thoughts with the world.

I’ve learned much from the internet (both from humans and non-humans) and I’d like to contribute back in my own small way.

The domain name comes from Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things:

To begin: since nature is shown to be twofold, consisting, in fact, of two far different things, matter, and space in which events occur, each must be single, absolute, and pure. For where there’s empty space (what we call “void”) there, matter is not; further, where matter is, there, in no possible way, can there be void. Prime bodies are solid, then, and without void. Now since there is void in created things it must be solid matter that hems it in. Nor can true reason prove that anything holds void concealed within, unless you grant that what contains it is pure solid matter.

Further, it could be nothing but a meeting of matter that could contain the void in things. Thus matter, which consists of solid body, can last forever, though all else is destroyed. Then further, if there were no empty void, all would be solid; but if there were no atoms to fill whatever space they occupied, then All-that-Is would be mere space and void. There are two things, then, separate and distinct: atoms and void; the world is not simply full, nor empty, either. No, atoms do exist, that show where “empty” ends and “full” begins.

A more terse version from Democritus:

Everything is atoms and void, all else is opinion.

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Cygnus Loop Nebula - credit NASA JPL