[ExI] physics

[Dan TheBookMan]

> On Apr 24, 2016, at 9:43 AM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I read John's post with interest if not comprehension.  I did like the one about a blank page that is not a picture until a line is drawn on it  Without going through the obvious ('what is a picture'?), does this follow?
> 
> Say there is a cube of space (in 'outer' space) that has not one single atom of matter (violating entropy I suppose).  Does this mean that it is not in some sense 'space'?  Not until some matter is there?
> That there is no 'there' there?
> 
> Some say our universe is expanding.  Does this mean that some 'potential space' exists beyond any matter that will become 'space' when some matter gets there?
> 
> This is the kind of probably silly thinking that people like me who haven't had physics since 1959 think of.  Maybe I just don't have the background to understand any answer, but I thought I'd give it a shot.
> 
> I did not ask about the idea of 'nothing' and 'something' being pretty much the same because I am certain I won't get that.  Kissing my wife and kissing the air are different and I don't give a barrel of used food who says elsewise.

This gets into the issue of whether space is something in its own right -- usually going under the label "sustantivalism." A classic work on this is Lawrence Sklar's _Space, Time, and Spacetime_. 

Regards,

Dan
  Sample my Kindle books via:
http://author.to/DanUst
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