Imaginary Space Outside the World

Abstract

Inasmuch as it was the contention of Aristotle, the first among philosophers and theologians that many worlds do not exist beyond this of ours, rational thought dictates that this world must also have a terminus. Since, however, it would be contrary to nature and God that anything (other than God) should extend infinitely, the human mind eagerly inquires what there is beyond this world or what bounds it. Is it the so-called First Mobile or the Empyrean Heaven or those waters believed to be above the heavens — or is it anything else? What, indeed, confines or limits it? (ERRATUM read “disquirit. Aristotles” for “disquirit Aristotles”.) Aristotle in his De Caelo, Book III, Chapters 8 and 9, expressly stated that above the furthermost heaven (which to his way of thinking is the heaven of the stars or the body of nature or the support of the most distant revolution), there is neither place nor time nor vacuity, but nothing at all. Indeed, he is eager to confirm by reasonable argument his belief that no natural body can be there. Some writers declare that there is a kind of imaginary space beyond the world. They call this an “imaginary ubiquitousness.” This appears, however, in different forms to the imagination of different scholars, or if they reject that it has this form, at least it serves as a basis for their imagining.