The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

the boundaries
of the vessel which seem to be place, but also what is between
them, regarded as empty. Just, in fact, as the vessel is
transportable place, so place is a non-portable vessel. So when
what is within a thing which is moved, is moved and changes its
place, as a boat on a river, what contains plays the part of a
vessel rather than that of place. Place on the other hand is rather
what is motionless: so it is rather the whole river that is place,
because as a whole it is motionless.
    Hence we conclude that the innermost motionless boundary of what
contains is place.
    This explains why the middle of the heaven and the surface which
faces us of the rotating system are held to be ‘up’ and ‘down’ in
the strict and fullest sense for all men: for the one is always at
rest, while the inner side of the rotating body remains always
coincident with itself. Hence since the light is what is naturally
carried up, and the heavy what is carried down, the boundary which
contains in the direction of the middle of the universe, and the
middle itself, are down, and that which contains in the direction
of the outermost part of the universe, and the outermost part
itself, are up.
    For this reason, too, place is thought to be a kind of surface,
and as it were a vessel, i.e. a container of the thing.
    Further, place is coincident with the thing, for boundaries are
coincident with the bounded.
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5
    If then a body has another body outside it and containing it, it
is in place, and if not, not. That is why, even if there were to be
water which had not a container, the parts of it, on the one hand,
will be moved (for one part is contained in another), while, on the
other hand, the whole will be moved in one sense, but not in
another. For as a whole it does not simultaneously change its
place, though it will be moved in a circle: for this place is the
place of its parts. (Some things are moved, not up and down, but in
a circle; others up and down, such things namely as admit of
condensation and rarefaction.)
    As was explained, some things are potentially in place, others
actually. So, when you have a homogeneous substance which is
continuous, the parts are potentially in place: when the parts are
separated, but in contact, like a heap, they are actually in
place.
    Again, (1) some things are per se in place, namely every body
which is movable either by way of locomotion or by way of increase
is per se somewhere, but the heaven, as has been said, is not
anywhere as a whole, nor in any place, if at least, as we must
suppose, no body contains it. On the line on which it is moved, its
parts have place: for each is contiguous the next.
    But (2) other things are in place indirectly, through something
conjoined with them, as the soul and the heaven. The latter is, in
a way, in place, for all its parts are: for on the orb one part
contains another. That is why the upper part is moved in a circle,
while the All is not anywhere. For what is somewhere is itself
something, and there must be alongside it some other thing wherein
it is and which contains it. But alongside the All or the Whole
there is nothing outside the All, and for this reason all things
are in the heaven; for the heaven, we may say, is the All. Yet
their place is not the same as the heaven. It is part of it, the
innermost part of it, which is in contact with the movable body;
and for this reason the earth is in water, and this in the air, and
the air in the aether, and the aether in heaven, but we cannot go
on and say that the heaven is in anything else.
    It is clear, too, from these considerations that all the
problems which were raised about place will be solved when it is
explained in this way:
    (1) There is no necessity that the place should grow with the
body in it,
    (2) Nor that a point should have a place,
    (3) Nor that two bodies should be in the same place,
    (4) Nor that place should be a corporeal interval: for what is
between the boundaries of the place is any body which may chance to
be there, not an interval in body.
    Further, (5) place is also somewhere, not in the sense of being
in a place, but as the limit is in the limited; for not everything
that is is in place, but only movable body.
    Also (6) it is reasonable that each kind of body should be
carried to its own place. For a body which is next in the series
and in contact (not by compulsion) is akin, and bodies which are
united do not affect each other, while