If you tear a sheet of paper into tiny pieces of paper, you will not be able to determine if you have discovered the smallest possible piece of paper. Therefore, you cannot prove in this way that whether paper is made of nothing but paper. Remember: there are three possibilities: every piece of paper might be divisible into smaller pieces of paper, continuing endlessly to smaller and smaller pieces; or there might be a smallest piece of paper that cannot be divided; or paper might be made out of small pieces of something else, small pieces which together have the properties of paper. We will test the third possibility. Weigh the piece of paper; then set it on fire. When it has burned, weigh the ashes that remain. In this way, you prove that paper consists of at least two ingredients. One ingredient is the ash that is left; the other ingredient somehow disappeared in the fire.
In the ancient world, many philosopher/scientists concluded that the material world and everything in it consists of four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. From this experiment, they would say that paper must consist of earth (the ashes left when the paper was burned) and fire (the missing weight that disappeared when the paper was burned). For centuries, philosopher/scientists called alchemists proposed theories and conducted experiments to learn more about the material world and the substances in this world. Often alchemists are portrayed as magicians trying to turn lead into gold. They did, in fact, attempt to make that change. However, they also performed many other investigations which led to the modern discovery of the science called chemistry.
Modern science would determine that most of the ash produced by burning the paper is an element called carbon. Carbon is one of the elements found in paper. Modern science also reports that water is not an element. Each molecule of water contains three atoms—two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. Water molecules can be broken. Connect wires to the terminals of a battery and put the wires into a glass of water. Bubbles will form at each wire—hydrogen molecules at the cathode (attached to the negative pole of the battery) and oxygen molecules at the anode (attached to the positive pole).
If you could see a molecule of water, it would look like a Mickey Mouse head—two little atoms of hydrogen set sixty degrees apart on a larger atom of oxygen. Remember that these molecules are very tiny. A large number of them are required for the water to have any properties that our senses can detect. But another interesting fact about a glass of water is that –in addition to chemicals contained in the water—even a full glass of water contains much empty space.
To prove this, try the following experiment. Take a measuring cup and carefully add half a cup (four ounces) of water. Now carefully add a tablespoon of water and notice that the water level is above the half-cup (or four ounce) mark. Add a second tablespoon of water, and you now have five ounces. Add two more tablespoons of water, and you have six ounces, or three-quarters of a cup of water.
Now add a tablespoon of sugar and gently stir until all the sugar is dissolved. Notice that the water level has not increased above the six-ounce mark. Do so again, and you still have only three-quarters of a cup of water. A third time will not have the same results, because all the sugar cannot dissolve. But, even with three tablespoons of sugar in six ounces of water, you will still be far closer to the six ounce line than you are to the full cup of water. The dissolved sugar has found empty spaces between the molecules of water in your cup.
Matter contains atoms, but it also contains much empty space. Empty space exists between electrons and nuclei in each atom (and none of the sugar was able to fit into that empty space in the water). Empty space exists between molecules in even the most seemingly solid substances. Empty space exists beyond the atmosphere of the earth. Except for the brief times when the Moon, Mercury, Venus, or some asteroid crosses between the Earth and the Sun, that distance is more than ninety million miles of empty space. Even with one of those objects in the way, the bulk of that ninety million miles is empty space. More empty space separates the Sun from other stars, and yet more empty space lies between the galaxies. Most of the universe is empty space.
Empty space is not nothing. People who confuse emptiness, or the void, with nothing make the same mistake that the Cyclops named Polyphemus made in Homer’s Odyssey. Clever Odysseus introduced himself to the Cyclops as “No one.” Later, when Odysseus poked a sharpened stick into Polyphemus’ eye, the Cyclops roared out, “No one is attacking me! No one has blinded me!” None of his friends came to help him; they thought that, if no one was attacking him, everything was fine. Likewise, in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the king asks his messenger who he passed on the road and the messenger answers, “nobody.” The king remarks that nobody is slower than his messenger. Indignant, the messenger says that he believes nobody is faster than he is. “He can’t do that,” the king said, “or he’d have been here first.”
In the same way, even experienced philosophers sometimes confuse themselves, mistaking emptiness or the void with nothing. Earlier philosophers felt that empty space was impossible. For anything to move, they figured, it must displace something else. When you walk into a room, you displace some air. When you lower yourself into a bathtub, you displace some water. (When Archimedes realized the significance of that displacement, he was so invited that he invented streaking.) Those early philosophers were certain that, from the very smallest pieces of the world to the very largest, everything must displace something else as it moved. They were the ones who coined the expression, “Nature abhors a vacuum,” which has nothing to do with housecleaning.
But Nature cannot abhor a vacuum; nature is almost entirely vacuum. From the empty space inside each atom to the empty space between galaxies, most of the universe is empty space. But emptiness, or void, can be measured. The tiny space between electrons of an atom and its nucleus can be measured (and that empty space is much bigger than the nucleus of the atom, let alone the electrons). The empty space between planets and the sun, or between stars, or between galaxies, can be measured. Because it can be measured, it is not nothing.
A modern physicist says that the universe is expanding. Ask, “into what is it expanding?” and the physicist answers, “Nothing.” They physicist does not mean empty space or a void; the nothing that surrounds the known universe is not measurable empty space or void. Christians say that God created the universe out of nothing. They do not mean that He created out of void or empty space. Before God created, according to Christian teachings, nothing but God existed—not even empty space, not even a void. The difference is very important to Christian teachers and to modern physicists. J.
Salvageable 