Editing Nothing (section)

====Leucippus====
[[Leucippus]] (early 5th century BCE), one of the [[atomists]], along with other philosophers of his time, made attempts to reconcile this monism with the everyday observation of motion and change. He accepted the [[monist]] position that there could be no motion without a void. The void is the opposite of being. It is ''not-being''. On the other hand, there exists [[Something (concept)|something]] known as an absolute [[wikt:plenum|plenum]], a space filled with matter, and there can be no motion in a plenum because it is completely full. But, there is not just one monolithic plenum, for existence consists of a multiplicity of plenums. These are the invisibly small "atoms" of Greek atomist theory, later expanded by [[Democritus]] (c. 460–370 BCE), which allows the void to "exist" between them. In this scenario, macroscopic objects can ''come-into-being'', move through space, and pass into ''not-being'' by means of the coming together and moving apart of their constituent atoms. The void must exist to allow this to happen, or else the "frozen world" of Parmenides must be accepted.

[[Bertrand Russell]] points out that this does not exactly defeat the argument of Parmenides but, rather, ignores it by taking the rather modern scientific position of starting with the observed data (motion, etc.) and constructing a theory based on the data, as opposed to Parmenides' attempts to work from pure logic. Russell also observes that both sides were mistaken in believing that there can be no motion in a plenum, but arguably motion cannot ''start'' in a plenum.{{sfn|Russell|1995|pp=85-87}} Cyril Bailey notes that Leucippus is the first to say that a "thing" (the void) might be real without being a body and points out the irony that this comes from a materialistic atomist. Leucippus is therefore the first to say that "nothing" has a reality attached to it.<ref>Cyril Bailey, ''The Greek Atomists and Epicurus: A Study'', pp. 75–76, The Clarendon Press, 1928.</ref>