So powerful is the effect of this scalar model that Simplicius can claim that extension, far from being a universal feature of things, is found only at the lower levels. In the realm of intellective being, there are only unextended and incorporeal items, including the places of noetic items such as ideas and numbers. As descent is made into the realm of matter, extension becomes ever more crucial—an extension that applies to places as well as to things in places. This means that place becomes extended with bodies,109 and is not simply extended on its own and independently of bodies, as is implied on the model of Philoponean spatial and cosmical extension. Extension is thus an acquired attribute of place: “As the body that has position became extended through its decline, so also place that is the measure of position became extended, in the way that is possible for a measure that has declined from the unextended measurer.”110 In this statement of Simplicius, the Damascian idea of place as measure—intrinsically tied to the relativism of internal positions—is set within an emanationism of levels that is no less relativistic in implication. Speaking of place and time alike, Simplicius can comment that “their extension is not like that of other things, seen as they are as a mean between the unextended measurer and the extended objects measured.”111 To be “a mean between” is to have a position in a hierarchy of at least three levels, and thus to have a cosmic position that determines the very character of place and time themselves. Instead of being “God’s infinite sensoria” (Newton) or the universal forms of pure sensible intuition (Kant), place and time are creatures of the level of emanation on which they are situated.
Double positioning is at play, then, in the Neoplatonic universe: first, a structural positioning within the cosmic hierarchy (which determines, in turn, whether place is extended or not) and, second, the pinpointed positioning that is the work of extended place proper (about such place Simplicius says that “everywhere it is the position of bodies and the determination of their position”).112 Moreover, the first positioning makes possible the second: only when place becomes adequately extended at an intermediate level of the emanationist hierarchy can it begin to do its locational work. For only at this level is there a distinction to be made between the immediate, unique, and shared implacements that guarantee a complete positioning for any extended body.113 As a result, the scalar model in its Neoplatonic format allows Simplicius to adopt a relativism that is finally more radical than that of Theophrastus. Where Theophrastus had made “natural shape” (emmorphos phusis) responsible for the “order and position” of bodies, Simplicius attributes this ordering force to place: “Place is a certain arrangement and measure or demarcation of position.”114
V
The signs of the gods are perpetually scattered in places.
—Simplicius, In Aristotelis physicorum libros quattuor priores commentaria
Just as the Neoplatonic proclivity for absolutism in spatial matters harbors an unsuspected underside of place-relativism, so the latter tendency leads, by rebound as it were, to a proposal that encompasses both directions of thought. Only several sentences after the words quoted at the end of the previous paragraph—words that epitomize the relativistic position—Simplicius speculates that when particular positions are not just juxtaposed but “well arranged” (euthetismenoi), that is, “well positioned and well placed” (euthetoi kai eutopoi), they will contribute to the harmony of the whole of which they are parts. Ultimately, all bodies, once they are well arranged, will become inherent parts of the “whole universe,” and this universe itself will have its own place: “so there is, in truth, the whole place of the whole universe (holos topos tou holou kosmou), but it has its supreme position through the good arrangement in respect of its parts and through its whole good arrangement in respect of its parts.”115
This last claim is remarkable. On the one hand, there is a proper place of, or rather for, the entire cosmos. This place must be unique, since there is no other cosmos or anything else of comparable magnitude to which it could be relative. (The idea of multiple worlds, entertained by the Atomists and Epicurus, will not be taken seriously again for another thousand years.) In this regard, the single cosmic Place can be considered the “transcendent measure” of all other places, including those parts and places (and places-as-parts) of which it is composed.116 Concerning such a cosmically distinctive Place, Simplicius can say that “the essential place of the universe has stored up all the varying places and produces from within itself the proper measure of every position.”117 In this monolithic capacity, it is not unlike the Philoponean idea of “cosmical extension.” On the other hand, this same super-place remains relative. Even if the place of the cosmos is not dependent on any of its parts (or on their totality), its “supreme position” does depend on a good arrangement that involves these parts in the following ways.
•The parts must be well arranged among themselves; this is what Simplicius means by the simple phrase “through the good arrangement of its parts.”
•The same parts must be well arranged in relation to the whole they compose—that is, the whole cosmos or universe (terms significantly not distinguished by Simplicius).
•Finally, the cosmos itself must be well arranged in relation to its own parts, both as particular parts and as a whole of parts. This is what Simplicius implies when he speaks of “its whole good arrangement in respect of its parts.”
Simplicius sums up this line of thought by observing that “in general, we do not only say that the parts have a well-arranged position in relation to each other and to the whole, but also that the whole has it in relation to its parts.”118
I single out this final position of Simplicius—himself the last great pagan Neoplatonist—for its special promise as an answer to a question that will preoccupy the rest of this chapter and the next three chapters: Is place, as well as space, essentially relative or absolute? Are they heteronomous in status, that is, dependent on other entities for their being and character, or autonomous, that is, able to stand on their own no matter what their parts (or constituents) and motions are? Simplicius’s response is that place/space is both absolute and relative. Not just both in the sense of an indifferent mixture, but both in the sense of one through the agency of the other. The place of the universe would not be absolute unless it were also relative—and relative in the particular ways just described. And it would not be relative—relative to the parts of which it is composed—unless these were the parts that, in proper arrangement, make up the cosmic whole. Put otherwise, the place of the universe is absolute in certain respects (e.g., in its transcendent all-measuring role) and relative in certain others (i.e., the three modes of relativity just singled out).
Simplicius’s model, ingenious and satisfying as it is in many respects, leaves us with two major unresolved questions. Is there a place of this world, the cosmos? Is there infinite space beyond the cosmos? Aristotle, of course, would respond negatively to both of these questions. Given that place on his view requires an unmoving and immediate inner boundary, the outer heaven cannot count as a place since it has no such boundary; and it is not set in any subsequent extracosmic space either, since there is “no place or void or time outside the [outer] heaven.”119 It was the audacity of Aristotle’s archrivals, the Atomists, not only to propose an unbounded void but also to argue that precisely because there is such a void the cosmos can be located in it. The void gives room for the world to be found within it—just as the world in turn gives “space for body” (in Philoponus’s phrase). It is clear that any such void is infinite in the sense of unbounded. As Hahm comments with reference to the Stoic void, “If there is any void at all beyond the cosmos, it is necessarily infinite, for there is nothing that can bound it.”120 But the void elicits its own disquieting questions: Is it necessarily empty (as its name, kenon, certainly implies and as the Stoics explicitly posited in the idea of a strictly external void)? If so, the cosmos will float in this void as an anchorless entity adrift in infinite space: “How can the cosmos remain intact though situated in an infinite void?”121 Or is it empty only in principle, being always filled in fact (as Philoponus holds)? But then it threatens to become a redundant entity or, rather, nonentity.
Yet no sooner do we give up on the idea of void—or perhaps