 Aristotle in his Physics (IV 4, 212a2–6) had argued that place is the first motionless limit of a containing body. His account, however, came under heavy criticism from the late Greek Neoplatonic thinker John Philoponus. Philoponus asserted that place is a (finite) three-dimensional extension that though never devoid of body on its own, nonetheless, considered in itself is self-subsistent, and so in theory could exist independently of a body. One of the ways that Philoponus defended this thesis was to argue that Aristotle’s account of place was inconsistent with other features of his philosophical system. Aristotle seemed committed to the following three claims: one, if something has a place, then given his definition of ‘place’ there must be something else beyond that thing that contains it; two, once approximately every twenty-four hours the outermost celestial sphere makes a complete westward rotation; and three, there are only three generic types of motion: motion with respect to (1) place, (2) quantity and (3) quality. Given these beliefs, Philoponus posed the following dilemma. Either the universe as a whole has a place or it does not. If it has a place, then Aristotle’s definition of place is wrong since there is nothing beyond the universe itself that contains it. If the universe as a whole does not have a place, then Philoponus asks, “In what respect does the outermost celestial sphere move during the course of its diurnal motion?” Again the motion either could be (1) with respect to the category of place (as when something undergoes locomotion), (2) with respect to the category of quantity (as when something grows or shrinks) or (3) with respect to the category of quality (as when something changes color or temperature and the like). Clearly the universe’s diurnal motion is not with respect to either of the categories of quantity or quality, and thus it must be with respect to place; however, in this horn of the dilemma it was assumed that the universe has no place, and so there is a contradiction. Although Philoponus had other arguments for his belief that place is the space occupied by a body, this dilemma is the one that most exercised subsequent Arabic-speaking natural philosophers.