Excerpts from Paul Lettinck & J.O. Urmson, Philoponus: On Aristotle Physics 5-8 with Simplicius: On Aristotle On the Void, 1994. Page numbering according to the translation.
p. 174-176
"He confirms the antiquity of this argument that introduces the void on the basis of motionk from Melissus’ treatment of the consequent as an obvious one, saying that, if what is moves, it moves through a void, and adding ‘but, however, there is no void’, and concluding that ‘therefore what is does not move’. It is clear that Melissus thus in a way relies on the argument. But he relies on it not with regard to the bodily or the partial, but to the intelligible and perfect. For he claims that this is one and unchangingk, proving, I think, its unchangingnessk through it being all and there being nothing beyond it, whither it will be transferred through the void. For THERE there is no void, nor, perhaps, even diversity, since it is everything. Also what is not will have no place in what is wholly real (to pantelôs on). And, even if there is diversity (heterotês) THERE, by which the forms are distinguished from each other, still diversity is a reality. The void has no place in that which wholly is, as does that which is not. ‘But do you guard your thought from this way of enquiry’ as the great Parmenides says.
Using the doctrine (endoxon) of the Pythagoreans, he adds their opinion as a fifth argument for the existence of the void. For these said that the void entered the cosmos which, as it were, breathed in or inhaled it like a breath from that which surrounded it outside. It fulfilled a need to prevent all bodies from being continuous with each other, as Alexander understands them. But Aristotle did not understand them as referring to bodies, but, he says, it ‘distinguishes different natures, the void being an agent of a certain separation of a series and distinguishing its members’. For the members of a series, with nothing between them, are what the void distinguishes; things separated by other things between them are not separated by the void but by those things. Such a power of the void applied to numbers and appeared first to distinguish their natures. For what else is it that distinguishes the monad from the dyad and this from the triad except the void, since no substance was between them?
But what might be these riddles of the Pythagoreans? Is it that the otherness that distinguishes the forms THERE beyond the bodily cosmos was participated in by the cosmos and so brought about the distinction and separation of the forms in it, there being no void THERE (for the beautiful, for example, is different from the just, not because it is not just, but because everything is in accordance with the beautiful through the union THERE, and because in that which wholly is there is not that which is not). But HERE a separation comes about through the intervention of that which is not. For the monad is not a dyad and the dyad not a monad, and the non-existent between them is the void which separates the forms in the cosmos, just as the otherness THERE beyond the cosmos does the forms. It is a being itself also and is not called not-being, and, therefore, not void, but is the cause of the void HERE. That is why Plato in the Sophist called it too, in a way, not-being.
These, then, are the arguments of those who said that there was void as set out by Aristotle. But Strato of Lampsacus reduced the four to two, that from changek of place and that from the compression of bodies, but adds a third which is from attraction. For it happens that the iron-stone attracts other iron things through yet others, when the stone draws out the contents of the pores of the iron, with which material the iron is also pulled along, and this in turn draws out material from another, and this from another, and thus a chain of pieces of iron hangs from the stone."
p. 180
"It is clear that according to that account of the void which says that that is void in which there is no body perceptible to touch, i.e. heavy or light, then, if there be some interval in which are the heavens, that would be void. For the divine body in circular motion is neither heavy nor light, as was proved in On the Heavens."
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