The Deep Metaphysics of Space (eBook)

Edward Slowik is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Winona State University, Winona, MN, USA, and Resident Fellow at the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science. His research interests are in the philosophy of space and time, and Early Modern philosophy, with special emphasis on the ontology of theories of space and spacetime, both contemporary and in Early Modern period.

Introduction.- Part I. Substantivalism and Relationism versus Newton and Leibniz.- A (Contrarian’s) Reappraisal of the History and Current State of the Ontology Debate in the Philosophy of Space.- Newton’s Neoplatonic Ontology of Space: Substantivalism or Third-Way?.- Leibniz’ Ontology of Space: Whither Relationism?.- Motion, Matter, Monads, and their “Forced” Relationship.- Part II. Third-Way Spatial Ontologies: Past and Present.- From Property to Structure: Exploring Contemporary Third-Way Conceptions of the Ontology of Space.- Newton’s Immobility Arguments and the Holism of Spatial Ontology.- The ‘Space’ at the Intersection of Physics, Metaphysics, and Mathematics.- The Multiple Paths towards an Epistemic Structural Realist Spatial Ontology.- Part III. The Deep Metaphysics of Space from the Seventeenth Century to Quantum Gravity.- A New Taxonomy Beyond Substantivalism and Relationism I: Early Modern Spatial Ontologies.- A New Taxonomy Beyond Substantivalism and Relationism II: Some Philosophical Prehistory of Quantum Gravity.- Epilogue: The Post-Seventeenth Century Evolution of the Standard Dichotomy.- References.