Inertial Effects

Inertial effects are felt when there is a change in constant straight motion- acceleration, rotation, changing direction etc.
This inertial effect that Newton showed was a direct attack on Descartes position in which he stated that objects are at true rest when they rest relative to their surroundings, but it also attacks the relationist, for the [...]

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Berkeley and Mach

Berkeley and Mach were relationists who attempted to take up and finish Leibniz’s arguments, especially when it came to inertial effects.
Both object to absolute space on the grounds put forward by Leibniz- namely PSR and PII. Absolutist talk is incomprehensible, just like ‘nelectricity’.
Berkeley says we cannot imagine a moving object without its moving relative to [...]

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Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles

‘To suppose two things indiscernible is to suppose the same thing under two names’. If the two universes cannot be told apart, according to PII, they are one and the same. Introducing Absolute space makes them different, this violating the principle.
Clarke says that the PII does not hold, for his ship example shows that there [...]

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Principle of Sufficient Reason and Absolute Space

Newton’s claim of the existence of Absolute space was attacked by the relationist Leibniz in a correspondence with the absolutist Clarke. Leibniz appealed to the maxim that nothing happens to be one way without a reason for it being such, and said that through looking at absolute space from this angle, it would be shown [...]

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Space, Time & Causality, S1

Absolutist- Space is euclidian everywhere (everywhere the same), so nothing will act any differently, no matter where you put it.
Positivist (logical positivism)- without observable evidence, what we talk about, i.e. bsolute space, is meaningless. (If we can’t verify terminology, it is meaningless, so the rationalist says that the absolutist is not positivist as they are [...]

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Space, Time & Causality, L4

Newton thinks that his Bucket example shows that even though there is no relative motion, we can still see the effects of absolute motion.
no objection to this is that the apparant absolute motion is actually explainable in terms of motion relative to the ‘fixed stars’. If is this relative motion that may effect the effect [...]

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Space, Time & Causality, L3

Leibniz’s arguments against Newtonian Absolute Space (NAS) include;

Principle of suficient reason (PSR), which can be explained in several ways; an infinite past, infinite backover, certain sequence of events, looped time, or backover causation. But then, another question is begged. What is the sufficient reason for one of these?
Principle of the identity of indiscernibles (PII)- If [...]

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Space, Time & Causality, L2

Relationism- Leibniz
Leibniz denies that space is object like. He says that Newtonian talk is misleading, and space is merely a matter of how material objects are related to oneanother. In other words, we cannot have ‘absolute motion’.
Positive Features of Relationism

Space only comes into existence with material objects (so there is no problem with space existing [...]

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Space, Time & Causality, L1

The main question: Is Space an entity?
Two main lines of response;

Absolutism- Space is an entity in its own right (Newton, Clarke)
Relationism- Space is no more than the relations between objects (Leibniz). i.e. friendship is a relation between two people, yet it is not an entity in its own right.

So what is space?

Void- emptiness into which [...]

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Newton, Scholium

Time, space and motion. Only I must observe, that the common people conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation they bear to sensible objects.
1. Time flows equably without relation to anything external, and by another name is called duration; relative, apparant and common time, is some sensible and external measure of [...]

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