What does "Nature Abhors a Vacuum" mean?
O the drinkers, those that are a-dry, O poor thirsty souls! Good page, my friend, fill me here some, and crown the wine, I pray thee. Like a cardinal! Natura abhorret vacuum. -- Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Chapter 1. V
I've received so many hits lately from people searching for the meaning of "Nature Abhors a Vacuum" that I decided to do the searchers of the world a service and bring together some links and thoughts on the subject. I've seen the quote attributed to any number of people: Spinoza, Descartes, Rabelais, even Tennessee Williams. But that it is an ancient proverb can be seen above in the latin of Rabelais' quote (published around 1532). Given his beliefs about the vacuum, it sounds like Aristotle to me.
So what does it mean?
Besides the calls of overly educated drunks for more wine, the phrase is usually used to say that absences are quickly filled. In a political context, the phrase refers to power vacuums -- if an important person or agency abandons their 'role', another soon takes it's place. In these contexts it seems like it would be more appropriate to say "humanity abhors a vacuum," or even more pedantically, "human structures abhor vacua."
But the phrase is more often used in the context of physical science to mean that matter, or more specifically gases, move to areas with less matter. This concept is as simple as opening a bottle of perfume and as complex as the 2nd law of Thermodynamics. We live in a universe where energy prefers to move from more coherent forms towards more diffuse forms and gases can accomplish that through physical diffusion and mixing. For more gibberish about entropy, find the hidden track on Robot Boy's first album.
Whether nature really does abhor vacuums remains debatable. The vast majority of the universe is more or less empty space, so it doesn't seem like nature is doing anything about her vast distaste. Sure, there are plenty of fields and virtual particles about, but that hardly counts. I firmly believe that we should do what we can to help nature out and fill the void.
This is a shameless plug
He's up! Great Mother of God, he's up! -- Clint Eastwood, Firefox
Though I've publickly proclaimed that I'll only advertise for my friends, I'm going to define friendship to include my favorite browser. "Firefox" might be a silly name, but it's truly the best browser that money can't buy. I just downloaded the 0.5 thunderbird mail client and I'm using a 0.7+ firebird nightly as my default browser.
One of the things I love most about it are the extensions. It's a stripped down browser, but you can add the things you like. EditCSS is possibly the best browser extension ever for web designers -- you can manipulate the styling of any page in real time. I've learned more from trial and error tweaking than from all the recommendations at w3c. The other developer extension I use a lot is "checky", it lets you validate and check a lot of neat things and was the original inspiration for my deutanic pages (if your using a modern browser, switch the stylesheet to deutanic. If your using MS internet exploder, go here.)
For normal web navigation, I like the the tabbed browser preferences that keep everything in the same window, and AdBlock. I can't handle flashing ads, no product is worth a seizure so it's nice to be able to get rid of them with a right click. Commercial sites now have so much beautiful white-space.
I could go on about the things I like about this browser, but I won't. See for yourself.