<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div>On Apr 24, 2016, at 9:43 AM, William Flynn Wallace <<a href="mailto:foozler83@gmail.com">foozler83@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">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?</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">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?</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">That there is no 'there' there?</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">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?</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">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.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">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.</div></div></div></blockquote><br><div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">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_. <br><br></span><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Regards,</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Dan</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> Sample my Kindle books via:</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><font color="#000000" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="http://author.to/DanUst" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">http://author.to/DanUst</a></font></div></div></div></div></body></html>