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Φ Unrestricted Philosophy - What is Space? Φ
Obscurations of the Definitional Kind
A
Paper with Extended Endnotes Copyright © 2009 by C. L. Brown –
UnrestrictedPhilosophy.com We shall begin what is this, our
fifth paper, by revisiting that with which we began our first paper1,
namely, the inquiry “what is space?” Before going any further with this
question, perhaps the question we really ought to be asking here is why would
this particular question be asked by anyone in the first place? In review
of our first paper as based on our assessment of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s
thinking, it might be notable semantic differences, most presumably
in the ways in which the word “space” is used as a noun2,
which strikes us as being “peculiar”, for lack of a better word, such that this
question is generated, such that it does appear. If there is any truth in
this thinking, however, then shouldn’t the question which should really be asked in
this situation instead be “what does ‘space’ mean?” or
“what is the meaning of ‘space’?”, respectively. If this really is the question one
means to ask when he instead does ask “what is
space?” then certainly one need do nothing more than consult a good dictionary
for what are standardly accepted, legislated
meanings of the word “space” as based on the historical usage of the
term. (There is a legitimacy to one’s consultation of a dictionary in the
sense of his wanting to answer “what is space?” in that a dictionary definition, definiens actually, is but an
example of a word-thing definition whereby the thing here read into the given
definiens corresponds to the what in the
question “what is . . .?” which in turn by the structure of this very question
is corresponded with the word — in this case, “space.”3 This
would account for the notion as to why in consulting the dictionary for what
really are meanings of the term “X” people often innocently think they are
instead really “looking up” what — in the term’s functioning as a noun at least — the
thing X “is.” This is the “natural
attitude” to which most of us do subscribe in terms of the nature, if one will,
of dictionary definitions — the “natural attitude”4, if one will, by which the
non-philosopher layman innocently, “instinctively” opts to more or less resolve
potentially thorny “what is X?”-type of issues.) To the extent of one’s feeling a need to consult a dictionary, however, isn’t
the (contextual) meaning of the word “space” something in itself which is
pretty much already (contextually), if one will, understood by all if not
then most users of the English language? In other words, does any
competent user of the English language really have a problem with how to
use the word “space”? Our answer here is probably no. Anyhow, if this is the case, and
we’d like to presume here that it is, then if anything the notion laid out in
our first paper in terms of semantic, i.e. meaning-based, differences as being
the culprit as to why someone might actually stop to ask “what is space?” can
perhaps be dismissed. The notion that the mind cramps on account of the
ears’ hearing the word “space” as used in a variety of different, though
familiarly understood, nominal contexts such that “what is space?” is elicited
as a sign of the mind’s confusion in terms of such understanding strikes us now
as being somewhat of an overreaction. In retrospect, perhaps too eager
were we in the rush to find common ground with Wittgenstein in terms of the
argument that this particular question appears mainly due to a “grammatical” confusion of
sorts. To suggest here
that we all do know the meaning of the word “space”, that is, what “space”
means is not something which we should find to be all that striking. The
word “space” in its precursor as the Latin “spatium”
is a word, or, we should say, word-form to which people dating back to
Greco-Roman times have either attached or connected a more or less generic
meaning (or meanings). Over the course of time, this term has undergone
episodes of semantic expansion, no doubt, and yet we should not find it
surprising that its core meaning of “(a) stretch or extent or interval”5
as attested over some two-thousand years ago is still validly in use
today. (We can thus say of “space” that for the most part it is a word
whose use even today is still not either too far removed from or is grossly
incompatible with its etymology.) The word “space”, however, isn’t the
only word which fits this description, for there are others like it to which
people have historically attached, for lack of a better word, clear and
distinct meanings or ideas such that these meanings or ideas still continue to
this day to be implemented when such words are evoked. To help illustrate this point let us
consider, if we may, the following passage at length given to us by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, coauthors of the Port-Royal
Logic (Logic or the Art of Thinking). In this passage Arnauld and Nicole do no less than (1) identify a number of
“metaphysical” words to which are normally associated clear and distinct, i.e. non-metaphysical, ideas, (2) promulgate
the notion of a “real definition” of X as being an obscuration read into the
clear and distinct idea(s) presumably already attached to the word “X”, and (3) suggest both the
learned and ignorant’s ability to equally discern the
same thing, the same idea as it were, when the word “X” bears a clear and
distinct meaning as used in everyday parlance.
Their passage runs effortlessly as follows. For when people have a
distinct idea of something, and when everyone who understands a language forms
the same idea upon hearing a word uttered, it would be useless to define it
since the goal of the definition has already been attained, which is to connect
the word to a clear and distinct idea. This is what happens with very
simple matters about which people naturally have the same idea. The words
signifying these ideas are understood in the same way by everyone who uses
them, or, if they sometimes mix in something obscure, still their principal
attention is always directed to what is clear in them. Thus those who use
them only to indicate clear ideas have no reason to fear that they will not be
understood. Words such as “being,” “thought,” “extension,” “equality,”
“duration,” or “time,” and similar ones are of this sort. For even though
some people obscure the idea of time by forming various propositions about it
which they call definitions – such as that time is the measure of motion
according to before and after – they do not attend to this definition when they
hear time mentioned, nor do they conceive anything beyond what everyone else
naturally conceives about it. And so the learned and ignorant alike just
as easily understand the same thing when they are told that a horse takes less
time to travel a league than a tortoise does.6 To the extent that Arnauld and Nicole so lucidly bear for us in this passage insights into things which are truly deserving
of attention in their own right, let us henceforth free ourselves of other,
petty matters and give our focus to the material here at hand. To begin with, we can read into Arnauld and Nicole their saying that
as long as potentially “philosophical” words, i.e. words which potentially,
historically bear or have borne some (type of) philosophical inquiry in
themselves such as “being” or “time” or, what we will include here,
“space”, are used in speech or script to denote clear and distinct ideas
there will then effectively not be or at least ought not be any real tendency
or inclination to wonder what one means by (his or another’s use of) them or what it
is they signify, what it is they stand for, if one will. (As these two coauthors indicate, in such
cases the “goal” to which an attempt at definition may lead has already been
met.) The key here, of course, is our
knowing when it is people are using terms like these to denote, as it were,
clear and distinct ideas. We would suppose that one is using one
of these terms as such if in the ears’ having heard the word in use the mind
does not stop or fixate on or single out the word afterwards because of any extraordinary
reason. We have in our paper written prior to this one presented two
examples of speech in which the term “space” is utilized and of which both the
academician and layman have the same, as it were, understanding of
what is meant by them. “There’s enough space on that shelf in which to
place this book” and “The reach of space is vast, seemingly infinite”,
respectively7: in these two sentential pieces of thought the
word “space” denotes a clear and distinct idea in each of them. No one
upon his hearing these two pieces of thought will rush to the dictionary in
order to “look up” the word “space” and find the appropriated meaning-thing to which
historical usage has designated it, though this in itself, i.e. history’s appropriation of thingness, understood in Richard Robinson’s sense at least8, is something which
readily goes unacknowledged by him.
These rather mundane pieces of thought may find their appearance, if one
will, in everyday parlance, and yet by no means is the list exhausted by them. One can, say, even read in the Scriptures
passages which if quoted in everyday parlance might
be done so with a bit more reverent air about them yet nevertheless do not in
themselves press upon the mind the desire or need for a more clear
understanding of (what is) space such as what can or could be gained by consultation of
the dictionary. One, for example, reads in
the Book of Job 26:7, “He stretches out the North over empty space, and
suspends the earth over nothing at all.”9
This passage which, of course, has made its way to us by way of
translation upon translation nevertheless would appear to perhaps be something
not exactly self-evident in itself, as it were, but rather explanatory enough
in its being a “cosmographical” account of creation, if one will.
(Perhaps the only terminology here which might require the consultation of an
extraneous source of some sort is the meaning of “the North”,
respectively.) Even if one was to ever invoke in his speech a pithily
made statement which could in some way be taken to be or at least be construed
to be an “alternative” definition of space, one might still need not
“consult” anything in order to understand the content of such said statement;
the quote attributed to Frank Lloyd Wright that
“[s]pace is the breath of art” comes to mind here. (This is not to say that heady, pithily made
statements about X cannot be refuted in any way as if they were being made as
propositions of X itself. Otto von Bismarck’s line that “[p]olitics is the art of the possible” has in fact been
“refuted”, if one will, recently by one author.)10 With that
said, however, what cannot be doubted is that over the centuries some rather
heady people have in fact used the word “space” to (1) import to the word
“space” some rather propositional meanings and to (2) import to the concept space
some rather propositional
aspects of thingness, as it were. In that the
common denominator here amongst all of this is the retention of the word
“space” itself, it can hardly be accidental then that into the word “space”, as
it has come to be used over time in modern parlance,
there has been infused a metaphysical content which
does at times bear little if any semantic resemblance at all to the word’s
etymological meaning of, as mentioned earlier, (a) stretch or extent or interval;
of course, as mentioned, this word can still very often at times be used today
to mean just this very sort of thing. It
would be far too easy here to blame, say, Albert Einstein for this infusion of
content; nevertheless, the fact that, cosmologically speaking, we are living in
a relativistic, hence post-Newtonian universe whereby when used the word
“space” does often not quite necessarily mean what it once did, say, when
Newton used it does speak for itself in terms of its being a marked example of
a technical, semantic expansion of
the term and concept space. (Einstein, as one author remarked, could instead have judiciously chosen
to use the more selective terminology of either “environment” or “collection of
potential gradients” instead of “space” as incorporated into his
relativistic theories.)11 Enough, though, has been said about all of this. Let us return to Arnauld and Nicole and parlay our thoughts into another
point of interest which they make mention, namely, the acquisition of
proverbial (Aristotelian) “real” definitions of X.
There is no doubt in the passage given above Arnauld and Nicole have in mind the idea of so-called “real
definitions” of time in their extolling the notion that by what some people mean
by “definitions” of time are nothing more than obscurations of the common idea
of time made available by way of such people’s “forming various
propositions about it.” The example given by Arnauld and Nicole though
not named as such is Aristotle’s classic formulation that “time is the measure
of motion according to before and after.”12 Clearly, as mentioned, this formulation, this
definition, is not what people usually think of time as nominally being when,
for example, they hear the “time” mentioned as, say, “half past ten.” No, the latter expression of “time” here
retains in it the “usual idea”13
of time whereas the former, “real” expression of time by its very meaning
purports “other ideas”14
about time. Other ideas about time: what,
may we ask,
might be meant here by this assertion on the part of Arnauld
and Nicole? Well, if anything, it might
just be nothing more than the prospect of (actual) being either implied by or imported into the concept of time by means, in this case, of
definitional content – a content which most people, most non-philosophers, that
is, do not envisage about time. As such,
by the very nature of such content the prospect arises that such essential
descriptions of time can be contested.
In other words they are not like the aforementioned nominal
understanding of “time” which can be taken for a principle in that such
understanding is not contestable, commonsensically
speaking, but rather as real definitions they are instead thus “genuine propositions
which can be denied by anyone who finds some obscurity in them.”15 This point to be made, if one will, on
the part of real definitions in their being open to denial and/or criticism is
evident in Aristotle’s real definition of time given above. While Aristotle may have thought he had successfully
argued by way of dialectic the proposition that time is the measure of motion according to before and after, this
definitional account has been denied and discredited thus demonstrating its
ultimate propositionhood. In fact this proposition-as-definition was
readily denied already in antiquity by one of Aristotle’s own Peripatetic followers
at the Lyceum, namely, Strato of Lampsacus.16 The prospect of its being outrightly
denied, however, is not the only “critical” assessment Arnauld
and Nicole make against a definition the caliber of which is Aristotle’s. For one, Aristotle’s definition is not a
“good” definition in that it is not “universal”, that is, inclusive of
“everything being defined.”17 In their words, This is why the usual
definition of time, that it is the measure of motion, is probably not good,
because it is very likely that time measures rest no less than motion, since we
can say that something was at rest for a certain time, just as we say that it
was moving for a certain time. So it
seems that time is nothing other than the duration of the creature, in whatever
state it is.18
“[T]ime
is nothing other than the duration of the creature, in whatever state it is”:
what do we make of this offering from Arnauld and
Nicole? It must thus be then an example
of what for them is a good, universal
definition of time in that in it is contained the idea of the “temporal”
continuance of all “creatures”, i.e. all created things, living or
non-living. Such an idea is predicated
on (the existence of) creatures and
hence being, thus indicating this
idea as one of the aforementioned “other ideas” upon which Arnauld and Nicole regard a so-called “real” definition as
resting. This definition then – the
duration of the creature, in whatever state it is – is what time apparently seems
to Arnauld and Nicole to be. Far different is the thingness implied in this “real”
definition from the thingness implied in many other
“real” definitions offered by Aristotle.
Consider for example the following three real definitions of Aristotle
as cited by Arnauld and Nicole, first the Latin then
the translation: 1. motion:
actus entis in potentia quatenus in potentia: the act of a being in potency insofar as it
is in potency.19 2. nature:
principium motûs
et quietis in eo in quo est: the principle of motion and rest in whatever it is
in.20 3. soul:
actus primus corporis naturalis organici potentiâ vitam habentis: the first form of a natural organic body,
which has life potentially.21 If anything, the chief criticism
brought against these, what some might say, “highbrow” yet truly archaic
conceptualizations of motion, nature, and soul, respectively, is that
they are not “clear.”22 For example, in terms of the unclarity which Aristotle affords in what is his definition
of soul, Arnauld
and Nicole write, We simply cannot tell what
he wanted to define. If it is the soul
insofar as it is common to humans and beasts, he defined a chimera, since
nothing is common to these two things.
Second, he explained one obscure term by four or five terms which are
more obscure. To mention only the word
“life,” the idea we have of life is no less confused than our idea of the soul, since these two terms are equally ambiguous and
equivocal.23 In general we might thus say then that the “other ideas” presented here as being attributable to motion and nature, respectively, are not in themselves ideas which are clear and distinct enough such that we really are helped to a good degree in terms of a newer understanding of motion and nature, respectively. For us, however, space is the object, for lack of a better word, under consideration. Is there anything in the Aristotelian formulation of what space is such that we too can in a critical assessment of it find problems or at least indications suggestive of “other ideas” as imported into what is otherwise the clear and distinct idea we all have of space? To answer this we first ought to find what the Aristotelian formulation of space is. To this end we turn not to an ancient source such as Aristotle himself but rather a fairly contemporary one. In that Aristotelianism as championed in medieval times in Europe was done so by Churchmen such that Scholasticism was that flowering result of the synthesis between reason and faith, what has come to us in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a revival, if one will, of Scholasticism is neo-Scholasticism. In what is an example of the neo-Scholastic definition of space, Paul J. Glenn offers this assessment, this conclusion actually: “Real space, then, is the relation of extent in, between, and among actually existing bodies.”24 The calling of this space “real space” denotes the Aristotelian lens through which the Scholastic and hence neo-Scholastic tradition has had to look upon such things, so to speak. The primacy of reality as being seen in the bodily or corporeal form – signified here by the (necessary) reference to actually existing bodies – is clearly evident. With that said what might we say conerning the content of this “highbrow” assessment, criticisms notwithstanding? For starters, we read into this definition the thinking that at the heart of the idea of space lies the concept of extent. This term, i.e. “extent”, has found its way into the common, standardized lexicon of today: recall in our paper written before this one25 the prevalence of this (specific) word in the definientia of the word “space” as reported by the lexicographers at Merriam-Webster. As far as all of this goes, we ought not be too surprised. However, not unlike the concern as mentioned by Arnauld and Nicole with the word “life” as it is given in the Aristotelian definition of soul do we likewise find a similar concern with the word “extent” as given in Glenn’s neo-Scholastic assessment of space. By this we mean here that the words “extent” and “space” can be and quite often are equally ambiguous and equivocal just as are the words “life” and “soul”, respectively, as mentioned by Arnauld and Nicole. Secondly, space as described here is simply not just extent but the relation of extent, and “the relation of” is a not uncommon indicator of Aristotelian-Scholastic thought. Thirdly, within the neo-Scholastic community what real space is is to be grasped in itself as a whole: Glenn offers elsewhere in his text the thinking that real space is “the extent of the bodily universe”26, and in this light space is to be considered singly in one fell swoop, as it were. In giving it some thought, however, one may read into the given prepositions of “in”, “between”, and “among”, respectively, the already given presupposition of extent or space: these prepositions indicate pre-spatial positioning (of actually existing bodies), as it were. Upon this view real space as defined here can be read to be then the relation of spaces which in themselves must necessarily be then by this definition relations as well. The resultant of real space then as the relation of relations teeters on the brink of infinite regression, and we should thus find it as no surprise that the ardent idealist Francis Herbert Bradley cites this very reason in order to reject any reality of or to space whatsoever such that what there really only is is the appearance of space. As Bradley writes in his treatise Appearance and Reality, “Space is essentially a relation of what vanishes into relations, which seek in vain for their terms. It is length of lengths of – nothing that we can find.”27 This last point which we want to make here concerning the content of this “highbrow”, neo-Scholastic assessment of what space is demonstrates — along with the first point we mentioned concerning the word “extent” — that it too cannot escape a general criticism of some sort. In the end the general assessment we can make of what is Glenn’s neo-Scholastic definition of real space is that which Arnauld and Nicole suggest Aristotle’s definitional attempts of motion and nature, etc., as being, namely, an obscuration of a commonly known idea evidenced in a formal proposition which would otherwise be called a “definition.” Arnauld, Antoine, and Pierre Nicole.
Logic or the Art
of Thinking. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1996. Bradley,
F. H. Appearance and Reality: A Metaphysical Essay. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1908. Glenn,
Paul J. Cosmology: A Class Manual in the Philosophy of Bodily Being. St. Louis, Missouri: B. Herder Book Company,
1939. Leclerc, Ivor. The Nature of Physical Existence. New York: Routledge,
2004. ENDNOTES 1. C. L. Brown, “A Wittgensteinian-Waismannian
Dissolution of the Question of Space” (http://www.unrestrictedphilosophy.com/dissolution.htm). ______________________________________________ 2. The thinking here that it is primarily in the nominal use of the word “space”, that is, in its use as a noun which, in everyday affairs, is what lies at the heart of this question’s being asked, was something echoed by us in n. 1 of “A Wittgensteinian-Waismannian Dissolution of the Question of Space.” In n. 1 two particular sentences which we invoked as examples in which the use of the word “space” as a noun was illustrated were “Satellites in space beam signals around the Earth” and “Our Earth travels in an elliptical orbit in space thousands upon thousands of miles per hour around the Sun”, respectively. In both of these examples, as is quite often the case in astronomicalspeak, objects – either satellites or our Earth – are described as (being) “in space.” This prepositional use of the word “space” in what are, yet not necessarily exclusive, astronomical contexts here should not be overlooked. We say this with interest because in his excellent piece The Metaphysical Concept of Space Morris Lazerowitz too makes use of similarly related astronomical examples wherein the prepositional use of “space” is made in order to preface his point that the word “space” is or at least can be identified as a noun. Interestingly, however, Lazerowitz’s main point in his demonstrating that “space” is a noun is that moreover it is a special kind of noun in that it is not the name of any (kind of) thing. In order to give credence to the points made here, namely, (1) the commonness of the phraseology “in space” as tied to astronomicalspeak, (2) the grammatical identification of the word “space” as a noun, and (3) the state of this noun’s not being the name of any container-like thing or anything in general, let us enlist Lazerowitz’s help and present an excellent passage here of his which illustrates these points for us. The word ‘space’ (and its
equivalents in other languages) has a use in ordinary speech and is not, of
course, a terminological contradiction: sentences like ‘A rocket has been shot
far out into space’ and ‘As distances between stars go, the planets in the
solar system are near each other in space’, are not self-contradictory. Philosophers are no more ignorant of this
than are others, nor do they use space terminology
less ‘gaily’ than ordinary, philosophically uninstructed people do. The word ‘space’ is, however, a noun which in
semantic appearance belongs to the class of substantives that are names of receptacles
or containers, without in fact being such a name. Its function in, e.g. the sentence, ‘There
are myriads of stars in space’, is not at all like the function of ‘casket’ in
the sentence, ‘There are many jewels in the casket’, although it simulates the
function of ‘casket’. It is a counterfeit
substantive which parades in our language along with such words as ‘casket’,
‘drawer’, and ‘house’; and some philosophers on whose attention this impresses
itself will take advantage of the linguistic appearance, engendered by phrases
in which the word occurs, to play a special language game with the word.[1] We would be remiss if we
stopped here with this passage as embodying Lazerowitz’s
only remarks concerning the points mentioned above. In the rather longish quote given below, Lazerowitz leads up to what is an adjectival understanding of the particular phraseology “X is ‘in
space’.” It is a natural form of
speech to say of bodies such as the planet Uranus and the stars that they are
far out in space. This is only another, if more intriguing way,
of saying that they are far from the earth or that they are immense distances
from us. And it is, apparently, not an
unnatural extension of language to speak of things, i.e. bodies such as chairs,
houses, mountains, the earth, as being in
space. Thus, for example, Kant and G. E.
Moore speak of such objects as being things of the kind ‘to be met with in
space’. We say that there is a sofa in
the living-room, and by a natural extension of language we speak of sofas and
living-rooms as being kinds of things which are in space. The series of expressions, ‘The sofa is in
the living-room’, ‘The living-room is in the house’,
‘The house is in space’, conjures up in our minds the picture of a thing which
is a nest of boxes, the outermost box being space itself. But this picture misrepresents the meaning of
the last of the series of expressions.
The forms of words, ‘The sofa is in the living-room’, and ‘The sofa is
in space’, are grammatically alike, alike in a respect which makes them look as
if they are values of the same function, ‘The sofa is in —’. But the difference between them, which is
covered up by their outward grammatical similarity, is enormous. It is tempting to say that the difference is
as great as the difference between being in a mood and being in a house. The phrase ‘in the living-room’ is so used
that with regard to anything about which it makes literal sense to say that it
is in the living-room it also makes perfectly good sense to say that it is not
in the living-room or that it is being moved out of the living-room: it makes
literal sense to say ‘The sofa is no longer in the living-room; it has been put
in the attic’. But the phrase ‘in space’
is so used that it makes no literal sense whatever to say, ‘The sofa has been
taken out of space and put somewhere else’ or ‘The sofa still exists but it is
no longer in space’. To make the point
non-verbally, it is possible to take a sofa out of a living room, it is
physically impossible but logically possible to hull out the fiery centre of
the earth and deposit the contents elsewhere, but it is logically impossible to take the sofa out of space. As against the sentence ‘Sofas are things
which are normally found in living-rooms’, which expresses an empirical
proposition, the sentence, ‘Material bodies are normally met with in space’, is
an absurdity of language. This is
because ‘Material bodies exist only in space’ expresses a logically necessary
proposition: being a material body entails
being in space. The fact that the words,
‘Material bodies, such as sofas and houses, exist only in space’, are used to
express a logically necessary proposition implies that the expression ‘in
space’ is so used that it applies to whatever ‘material body’ applies to. Unlike the sentence, ‘The sofa is in the living-room’,
or the sentence, ‘You will find the sofa in the living-room’, which says where a certain thing is, the sentence,
‘The sofa is in space’, says nothing about where that thing is or is to be
found. The expression ‘in space’ has a
use which is altogether different from the use of such an expression as ‘in the
house’. And what is its use, what it
means, is not hard to discover. The
expressions ‘in the house’ and ‘inside my body’ are used to convey information
about the location of objects. The expression,
‘in space’, to which there does not correspond an
intelligible
expression like ‘outside of space’, is not used to convey information with
regard to the whereabouts of objects; instead it has adjectival import, it
means ‘spatial’: x is in space = x is spatial.[2] Thus, to say of something
that it is “in” space is to imply nothing more than the notion that that
something is spatial, or spatially extended.
Its physical containment in
space or a space is not a reality predicated by the use of such prepositional
language. From this assessment then it
follows (p. 186) “[t]hat if to be in space is not to be in anything, then space itself cannot be a kind of thing, a sort of
container or, for that matter, an object in which a thing could, theoretically,
be embedded.” If space cannot be
such a kind of thing then why might
people have in the past and still to this day in spite of all of this continue
to impart into their everyday parlance such phraseology, i.e. of things as being “in space”, such that this language – as we have proposed
in the text – could engender those who speak it to in fact ask of themselves in
terms of space “what then is
it?” Concerning this matter we can
entertain two possibilities. First, this
phraseology is nothing more than a habitual form of speaking/thinking which was
effectively ensconced into modern parlance due mainly to the successfully
predicative power of Newtonian physics as established in the latter half of the
17th century. For Isaac Newton his notion of the space
in which his mathematical physics held true was that of an absolute (ab-solute), i.e.
existing-independently-of-what-occupies-it, container-space. Because of the spectacularly successful
application of Newton’s mechanics to the universe writ large, the descriptive
terminology of things (bodies) as being “in” space would hardly have ever
really impacted anyone as to whether such grammar was or was not strictly
correct. Reginald
O. Kapp writes in terms of the “doubts” that may have
lingered as to the appropriateness of the container view of space and the
subsequently descriptive, prepositional language that accompanies it, “[But
since the success of Newtonianism] the doubts were
never clamorous. When it was said that
all physical things are in space I do
not think that it would have occurred to many to
question the appositeness of the preposition ‘in’.”[3] What we can
say as to the second possibility why people continue to use the phraseology “in
space” as suggestive of things as somehow being contained “in” a container-like
space is that there is a powerful, dare we say, subconscious impulse in general of a person’s wanting to return to
the womb, so to speak. We
might want to employ the adjective
“Freudian” as characterizing the nature of our assessment made here, but rather
than this we will let the esteemed theologian
Thomas F. Torrance describe in his words what is the point we are attempting to
assert here. In modern as in ancient
thought some form of the receptacle notion of space seems to have been
predominant. Only in comparatively
recent science have we departed from it, but this step continues to involve us
in a struggle with age-old habits of mind for, as A. C. Ewing has pointed out,
we will persist in speaking of things as in
space or in time. There may well be at work here a substitute
symbolism arising out of post-natal desire for the security of being at home in
a container and anxiety at being thrust out into the open world where we are
not enveloped by finite constants but are exposed to limitless and
incomprehensible immensities.[4] A “post-natal desire for the
security of being at home in a container”: this is the terminology used by
Torrance in the attempt to possibly “locate” the phraseology as instinctually
coming from deep within the human subconscious, as it were, in the attempt to
psychologically quell the fear of one’s ever finding oneself displaced into an
infinite, terrifying nothingness, as
it were. (Lazerowitz
does not shy away from going as far as to suggest that perhaps it is the fear of open, empty space, i.e. a
place or places in which there is nothing
which, in such a fear’s being known as “agoraphobia”, is what drives some
philosophers to remain outright hostile to the very notion of space.)[5] In the
end, in terms of our two possibilities just discussed, what we can say of the commonly used phraseology
“in space” is that penetrating analysis can indeed be offered as to possibly
why such phraseology is so. [1]. Morris Lazerowitz, “The Metaphysical Concept of Space,” in Necessity and Language, Morris Lazerowitz and Alice Ambrose (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1985), p. 187. [2]. Morris Lazerowitz, “The Metaphysical Concept of Space,” in Necessity and Language, Morris Lazerowitz and Alice Ambrose (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1985), p. 184-186. The emphasis is Lazerowitz’s. [3]. Reginald O.
Kapp,
“Space,” The British Journal for the
Philosophy of Science Vol. X No. 37 (1959). http://www.reginaldkapp.org/Papers/Papers_Space.htm. The emphasis is Kapp’s. (Accessed April 30, 2009). [4]. Thomas F. Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation (New York:
Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005), p. 22. The emphasis is Torrance’s. [5]. It is not only
(certain) idealists whom Lazerowitz suggests may have
been secretly hostile to the notion of “empty space”, historically speaking,
but also, say, a plenist such as Parmenides as well
who could have been fearful or apprehensive of the notion of pure,
undifferentiated space, as it were. To
not only close out our series of longish quotes as given to us by Lazerowitz but also to have it richly suggested by him that
perhaps it is a fear of empty space which does to an extent impact not only
such thinkers’ verbal sentiments
concerning “space” but ours as well, let us present the following passage from Lazerowitz (p. 197-198).
We pay particular attention here to the interesting assessment made of
Immanuel Kant, who was perhaps the most prolific and yet “destructive”† idealist of them all. One of the
unconscious fantasies with which the words, ‘Space does not exist’, and ‘Space
is only an appearance’, would seem, quite unmistakably, to be connected centres on the fear of space.
Many people labour under some or other variant
of agoraphobia; and not only does it take open and direct forms which seriously
restrict a person’s freedom, it is also capable of manifesting itself in
subtle, displaced forms which are difficult to recognize. It should not, then, come to us as a great
shock and as altogether surprising to learn that the invisible entrepreneur
which backs the theatrical manoeuvring with the word
‘space’ is the fear of open, unfamiliar, or unprotected expanses displaced onto the word. Parmenides and many philosophers after him,
including Bertrand Russell, have maintained that empty space is impossible; and
it would not be surprising if in the depths of the minds of these thinkers
there lurked the fear of finding themselves alone in an otherwise empty
expanse, in Parmenides’ ‘unutterable and inconceivable’ place where there is nothing.
The fear of empty space when intellectualised
in the form of a theory and displaced on to the phrase ‘empty space’ (or its
equivalents) can be coped with more easily and with less pain than it can in
its original form, and the defences against it may
even yield intellectual pleasure. The
metaphysician of the cosmic plenum quiets his inner panic in a game he plays
with the term ‘empty space’; he fantasies its exorcism from language, while
retaining the expression ‘full space’, or ‘plenum’. A philosopher like Zeno, Bradley or Taylor
goes further. He banishes the word
‘space’ from our vocabulary, again only in play, by riddling it with
contradictions. He destroys it semantically. Or else he makes it harmless by confining its
use to expressions which describe mere
appearance. It may be observed
parenthetically that Kant, who held, as one of his views about space, that
‘space lies within the mind’, or is ‘in us’, was a metaphysical Jonah who
reversed the process and swallowed the whale.
He made space safe for himself by introjecting
it. As is well known, Kant never went
more than a few miles from Königsberg, although his
interests reached out to remote parts of the world, and even to the solar
system, about whose origin he formulated a hypothesis which has recently been
revived. Psychologically speaking, he
could explore what was safe, within himself. The words, ‘Space lies within the mind’, do
not, as they appear, state a theory about space; instead, they are used as a
secret description of a psychological feat.
†We put the term “destructive” here in quotation marks so as to recognize
the reputation Kant had amongst some in terms of the attacks he made, in Roger
Sullivan’s words, on “virtually every major philosophical position –
rationalism and empiricism, skepticism and dogmatism, naturalism and
supernaturalism. His friend Moses
Mendelssohn had good reason to describe him as the ‘all-destroyer, der alles Zermalmender.” Roger J. Sullivan, Immanuel Kant’s Moral Theory (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. xii. ______________________________________________ 3. Our reference here to a “word-thing”
definition and in the case of a lexical definition its, i.e. such definition’s,
being but an example of this sort stems from our reading of Richard Robinson’s
book Definition.† For Robinson
(1) lexical and (2) stipulative definitions are
categories of word-thing definitions; as for a word-thing definition, Robinson
(p. 21) offers this narrowest of definitions(!): “the process in which a human
being explains to a different human being the meaning of a general noun by
using words that give an analysis of the thing meant.” As for what he means here by “thing”, Robinson’s
following assessment (p. 30-31) is particularly illuminating in that the
meaning he extends to this word is seemingly all-encompassing in terms of all
possible existents and all actual non-existents, if one will. His evaluation runs as follows (our
emphasis): The word ‘thing’ is here
used in a very broad sense to cover anything, whether a separate enduring
physical object like a ball, or a momentary event like an explosion, or a
character like sphericality, or a doctrine like
liberalism, or anything else at all that
can possibly be symbolized by a single word. A word can be a ‘thing’, because it can be
symbolized by another word; but its function as a word can always be
distinguished from its status as a ‘thing’.
The ‘thing’ meant need not be particular, nor
material, nor independent, nor long enduring. It need never exist at all, as the thing
meant by the word ‘phlogiston’ never exists at any time or place. It need not even be logically possible. The thing meant by the word ‘infinitesimal’
is selfcontradictory.
None of this prevents the thing from being the meaning of some
word. Our term ‘thing’, therefore, means anything whatever, occurrent or nonoccurrent, selfconsistent or selfcontradictory,
so far as it is the meaning of some word. †Richard Robinson, Definition
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965). 4. The term “natural attitude” here is taken
from Alfred Schutz and Thomas Luckmann
in their book The Structures of the
Life-World, trans. Richard M. Zaner and J. Tristram
Engelhardt, Jr. (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern
University Press, 1980), p. 3. 5. This reference has been taken directly from Ivor Leclerc in his etymological
assessment of the word “space.” See Ivor Leclerc, The Nature of Physical Existence (New York: Routledge,
2004), p. 161. 6. Antoine Arnauld and
Pierre Nicole, Logic or the Art of
Thinking (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 64. 7. See C. L. Brown, “What the Man in the Street Knows” (http://www.unrestrictedphilosophy.com/man_in_the_street.htm). 8. By “thingness” here as understood in Richard Robinson’s sense we mean the state of something’s being something by which it is identifiable or able to be designated by one word only. ______________________________________________ 9.
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, The New American Bible
(Iowa Falls, Iowa: World Bible Publishers, 1986), p. 534. The fact that this particular quote was
chosen by us is not by accident; the inclusion of the terms “empty space” and
“nothing” in their being translated as such was the reason for our having done so. We say this because of the, for lack of a
better word, commonsensical notion or the commonly held taken-for-grantedness that empty
space and nothing are, say, one
and the same “thing”, if one will, and as well because of the thinking that both terms therefore
are often synonymous with one another.
When we say one we often mean the other; vice versa when we say the other we often might mean the one. Consider for example what the somewhat
obscure nineteenth century philosopher John Grote
scripted in what was posthumously published in Vol. II of his Exploration Philosophica: When
we say, ‘There is something there,’ we mean ‘There is not empty space,’ and when we say, ‘There is nothing there,’ we
mean ‘There is empty space.’ In using this language we are speaking in the
manner which I, in another place, have called ‘phenomena,’ i.e. we have in our reflection come fully into the notion of our
being corporeal beings in a physical world.
It is with this notion possessing us that we use the language which I
mentioned above: phenomenally space is nothing.[1] Moreover, in terms of our perception of what it is we often call “space”, Grote writes also, Our
observation, or notice, or recognition of it, or however we describe our coming
by the notion (for to me it seems unimportant), is in fact the notion of
absence of response to our sensiveness, the effort to
handle or see (with therefore the presence of the feeling that there is our
ought to be something to feel or see), but the finding nothing: the perception
of space is in fact abortive sensiveness.[2] It follows, therefore, in Grote’s thinking at least that “[w]hen we phenomenally perceive, or in other words exercise sense, and yet do not perceive anything, what we perceive is space.”[3] Let us proceed with this thought by way of an illustration. The cardboard box without any bodily thing “in” it is commonly said to be “empty”; “nothing”, one might haphazardly reply if asked “what’s in the box?” Surely invisible air is “in” the box, isn’t it? If so, and we take it here that it is, then why doesn’t one usually retort then “air is in the box” or at least “nothing but air”, respectively? The reason why one doesn’t usually hear replies like this is because air is phenomenally nothing because air is invisible. Of course, one can feel (the) air as it moves; the wind or a breeze in our face registers with us phenomenally as something. Stationary air, however, usually doesn’t register unless of course there is particulate matter of some sort like smoke in the air in which case one might claim he can “see” the air, and yet really he doesn’t; all he can see really is the particulate matter itself. The word “nothing”, however, as a reply cannot be fashioned as being the name of anything affirmative or positive in nature. A word other than “nothing” ought to be fashioned then as the name of something affirmable in its being an expected, positive response to the what in the question “what is in the box?” If this logic is the logic one ever takes in considering his response to the question “what is in the box?” The word which should be offered in response is, again, the word “air.” Quite often though, of course, it isn’t. “Space” or “empty space” might be offered as a so-called “positive”, non-“nothing” response, but then again as Grote relates to us, phenomenally speaking, space is nothing as well. Thus, perhaps it is a bit understandable now as to why one might reply with the word “nothing” when asked “what’s in the box?” when he knows full well of invisible air’s filling in the empty space, as it were, circumscribed inside the box. [1].
John Grote, Exploratio Philosophica Vol. II, ed. Joseph Bickersteth
Mayor (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1900), p. 194. The emphasis is Grote’s. [2].
John Grote, Exploratio Philosophica Vol. II, ed. Joseph Bickersteth
Mayor (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1900), p. 194. [3].
John Grote, Exploratio Philosophica Vol. II, ed. Joseph Bickersteth
Mayor (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1900), p. 194-195. ______________________________________________ 10. This line of Bismarck’s is considered to be his sentiments if not exact words. See Ralph Keyes, The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Were, and When (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006), p. 170. As a “refutation” or at least a criticism of the content of Bismarck’s statement here, one author cites the specter of nuclear war – a horrifying reality not yet available in Bismarck’s day – to make his point. States Chris Hables Gray, “Otto von Bismarck may have been right in the past when humans didn’t have apocalyptic weapons, but now he is very wrong. Politics must now be the art of the necessary, not the possible.”† Even the significance of Aristotle’s claim that “[m]an is by nature a political animal” can be “refuted” as well, as it were. States Gray again (p. xii), “Aristotle is wrong. Men and women are not political animals and that is to our credit. We are social, and there is a difference.” †Chris Hables Gray, Peace, War, and Computers (New York: Routledge,
2004), p. xiii.
11. While the terms “environment” and “collection of potential gradients” as argued by Reginald O. Kapp† do have their respective reasons as to why each might respectively, appropriately serve as the name of the single only environment, as opposed to the pre-Einsteinian view of two environments, a bit of ponderable matter may have, in the end it is the word “space” which is retained and used for this. In what would otherwise have been a bestowal upon one of these two words as the name of the single physical environment of ponderable matter, either “environment” or “collection of potential gradients”, respectively, in such a case would have been then elevated into a technical term: a technical usage is not of course the predominant manner in which these terms are familiarly used by us, however. The same, of course, could be said for “space”; in everyday parlance we do not use this word as a technical term as we do, say, use the term “curvature” when discussing relativity theory, for example. Nevertheless, the word “space” in Einstein’s relativity theory does function now as a technical term – as does “curvature” – and this is something of which the more serious student in us should be mindful.
†Reginald O. Kapp, “Space,” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Vol. X No. 37 (1959). http://www.reginaldkapp.org/Papers/Papers_Space.htm. The emphasis is Kapp’s. (Accessed April 30, 2009).
12. This quote is one of the translations of Aristotle made in the Physics 220a25. In the Hardie and Gaye translation, for example, this line reads instead as, “It is clear, then, that time is ‘number of movement in respect of the before and after’, and is continuous since it is an attribute of what is continuous.”† †Aristotle, R. P. Hardie, and R. K. Gaye, Physics.
Translated by R. P. Hardie
and R. K. Gaye. Digireads.com, 2006. 13. Antoine
Arnauld and
Pierre Nicole, Logic or the Art of
Thinking (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 61. 14. Antoine Arnauld and
Pierre Nicole, Logic or the Art of
Thinking (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 61. 15. Antoine Arnauld and
Pierre Nicole, Logic or the Art of
Thinking (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 62. 16. Strato’s criticism
of Aristotle’s definition of time as the number of motion was based on the former’s thinking that any number is a definite quantity, whereas time is
a continuum and, in his [Strato’s] opinion therefore,
and indefinite quantity or relation and as such could not be counted. Furthermore, and most importantly, the parts
of any number are always simultaneous, whereas the parts of time, being always
in succession, can never be simultaneous.
As Simplicius, the famous sixth-century
commentator of Aristotle’s Physics
reports in his Corollary on Time, Strato denied that time is the number of motion because a
number is a discrete quantity whereas time is continuous and the continuous is
not denumerable.† †Max Jammer, Concepts of
Simultaneity: From Antiquity to Einstein and Beyond (Baltimore, Maryland:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), p. 43.
17. Antoine Arnauld and
Pierre Nicole, Logic or the Art of
Thinking (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 127. 18. Antoine Arnauld and
Pierre Nicole, Logic or the Art of
Thinking (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 127. 19. Antoine Arnauld and
Pierre Nicole, Logic or the Art of
Thinking (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 127. 20. Antoine Arnauld and
Pierre Nicole, Logic or the Art of
Thinking (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 128. 21. Antoine Arnauld and
Pierre Nicole, Logic or the Art of
Thinking (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 128. 22. Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, Logic or the Art of Thinking (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 127. 23. Antoine Arnauld and
Pierre Nicole, Logic or the Art of
Thinking (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 128. 24. Paul J. Glenn, Cosmology: A Class Manual in the Philosophy of Bodily Being (St. Louis, Missouri: B. Herder Book Company, 1939), p. 97. The emphasis is Glenn’s. 25. See C. L. Brown, “What the Man in the Street Knows” (http://www.unrestrictedphilosophy.com/man_in_the_street.htm). 26. Paul J. Glenn, Cosmology: A Class Manual in the Philosophy of Bodily Being (St.
Louis, Missouri: B. Herder Book Company, 1939), p. 92. 27. F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality: A Metaphysical Essay (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1908), p. 37.
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