What Is Space?

DR. CRAIG: The debate between substantival and relational views of time and space is one of the most fundamental metaphysical questions about time and space. This debate put the great scientist Isaac Newton and the great German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz on opposite sides of the question. Newton was committed to a substantival view of time and space – they are actually things that God has caused to exist. On the other hand, for Leibniz, space and time are relations obtaining between objects and events and therefore you could not have, for example, on Leibniz's view, an empty time devoid of events or an empty space utterly devoid of objects. Whereas, on Newton's view, it would make sense to talk about a kind of void time that exists even though there are no events happening, or a completely empty space without any sort of matter and energy. And this debate goes on today; it's unresolved. I do not have a firm position or opinion, though I'm more inclined toward the Leibnizian view. Get a copy of the correspondence between Newton's disciple Samuel Clarke and Leibniz.^[1] They actually had an exchange of correspondence in which they dealt with this question. The Clarke-Leibniz correspondence on the substantival and relational view of time is just absolutely brilliant, it's gripping, and gives you a good summary of the arguments on each side.