Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who maintains that all space is full of matter; one who denies the possibility of a vacuum or the reality of empty space.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who holds that all space is full of matter.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun One who believes that all space is full of matter.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin plenus full; compare French pléniste.

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Examples

  • Gassendi's notion of non-relative space stands in direct contrast to the Cartesian plenist account, which suggests that space just is place, as defined by the extension of the resident (and universal) matter.

    Pierre Gassendi Fisher, Saul 2005

  • All the mechanical phi - losophers — the atomists Hobbes and Gassendi as well as the plenist Descartes — recognized that they pos - sessed no workable method of directly observing nature at the micro-level, and thus were prevented from gaining real knowledge of the atomic clockwork which to them doubtless existed.

    Dictionary of the History of Ideas ROBERT H. KARGON 1968

  • Strictly speaking, therefore, Descartes was not an atomist but a vorticist and plenist.

    Dictionary of the History of Ideas ROBERT H. KARGON 1968

  • It was the 1640's that marked the flowering of atom - ism and of Cartesianism, its plenist partner in mecha - nism.

    Dictionary of the History of Ideas ROBERT H. KARGON 1968

  • a plenist, rejecting the intelligibility of a vacuum.

    Spinoza's Physical Theory Manning, Richard 2006

  • While Descartes had provided an epistemology for his plenist version, there was nothing comparable for the atomist version associated with Gassendi and Boyle until Locke supplied it (McCann 2002, pp. 354 “ 355).

    Locke's Philosophy of Science Kochiras, Hylarie 2009

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