  As for the containing space in which atoms reside, Gassendi offers empirical and apriori arguments on behalf of a void. He takes the barometric experiments of his day, including his own at Toulon, to demonstrate the existence of at least a partial, disseminated void. Moving beyond such empirical argument, he echoes ancient atomists' reasoning. Thus he rehearses the classical arguments that without disseminated void between the parts of bodies, one cannot explain division and separation of matter at the level of basic particles, and that without the inane coacervatum, one cannot explain the motion of bodies through space.