Space

Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have
relative position and direction.[1] Physical space is often conceived in three
linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be
part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime. The concept of
space is considered to be of fundamental importance to an understanding of the
physical universe. However, disagreement continues between philosophers over
whether it is itself an entity, a relationship between entities, or part of a
conceptual framework.

Debates concerning the nature, essence and the mode of existence of space date back
to antiquity; namely, to treatises like the Timaeus of Plato, or Socrates in his
reflections on what the Greeks called khôra (i.e. "space"), or in the Physics of
Aristotle (Book IV, Delta) in the definition of topos (i.e. place), or in the later
"geometrical conception of place" as "space qua extension" in the Discourse on
Place (Qawl fi al-Makan) of the 11th-century Arab polymath Alhazen.[2] Many of
these classical philosophical questions were discussed in the Renaissance and then
reformulated in the 17th century, particularly during the early development of
classical mechanics. In Isaac Newton's view, space was absolute—in the sense that
it existed permanently and independently of whether there was any matter in the
space.[3] Other natural philosophers, notably Gottfried Leibniz, thought instead
that space was in fact a collection of relations between objects, given by their
distance and direction from one another. In the 18th century, the philosopher and
theologian George Berkeley attempted to refute the "visibility of spatial depth" in
his Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision. Later, the metaphysician Immanuel Kant
said that the concepts of space and time are not empirical ones derived from
experiences of the outside world—they are elements of an already given systematic
framework that humans possess and use to structure all experiences. Kant referred
to the experience of "space" in his Critique of Pure Reason as being a subjective
"pure a priori form of intuition".

In the 19th and 20th centuries mathematicians began to examine geometries that are
non-Euclidean, in which space is conceived as curved, rather than flat. According
to Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, space around gravitational
fields deviates from Euclidean space.[4] Experimental tests of general relativity
have confirmed that non-Euclidean geometries provide a better model for the shape
of space.