Principle of plenitude

• Epicurus reiterated the principle in fr.266 Us. His follower Lucretius famously applied the principle to the sets of multiple explanations by which the Epicureans account for astronomical and meteorological phenomena: every possible explanation is also true, if not in our world, then elsewhere in the infinite universe.
• Augustine of Hippo brought the principle from Neo-Platonic thought into early Christian Theology.
• St Anselm's ontological arguments for God's existence used the principle's implication that nature will become as complete as it possibly can be, to argue that existence is a "perfection" in the sense of a completeness or fullness.
• Thomas Aquinas accepted a modified form of the principle, but qualified it by making several distinctions that safeguard the freedom of God.
• Giordano Bruno's insistence on an infinity of worlds was not based on the theories of Copernicus, or on observation, but on the principle applied to God. His death may then be attributed to his conviction of its truth.
• Spinoza, according to Lovejoy, "expressed the principle of plenitude in its most uncompromising form" and "represented it as necessary in the strict logical sense".
• Kant believed in the principle but not in the possibility of its empirical verification.
• Leibniz believed that the best of all possible worlds would actualize every genuine possibility.