itself simply nonentity having no property except a capacity for 
being occupied, they proceeded to fill it several times over with 
ethers designed to provide electric, magnetic, and gravitational 
forces, and to account for the propagation of light.” (pp. 98­9)

     Perhaps no more striking evidence of the merely visual 
and uniform character of the space was given than in the 
famous phrase of Pascal: “Le silence éternel des espaces infinis 
m’effraie.” Some meditation on why silent space should be so 
terrifying yields much insight into the cultural revolution going 
on in human sensibilities by the visual stress of the printed 
book.

     But the absurdity of speaking of space as a neutral 
container will never trouble a culture which has separated its 
visual awareness from the other senses. Yet, says Whittaker (p.