Space

By Torretti, Roberto

In some of its uses, the word ‘space’ designates an empty or potentially empty expanse among things, for example, when a driver finds a space in a crowded ...

Spacetime

By Torretti, Roberto

Spacetime is the four-dimensional manifold proposed by current physics as the arena for Nature’s show. Although Newtonian physics can very well be reformulated in a spacetime setting, the ...

Jaina philosophy

By Soni, Jayandra

The issues in Jaina philosophy developed concurrently with those that emerged in Buddhist and Hindu philosophy. The period from the second century bc to about the tenth ...

Mathematics, foundations of

By Detlefsen, Michael

Conceived of philosophically, the foundations of mathematics concern various metaphysical and epistemological problems raised by mathematical practice, its results and applications. Most of these problems are of ancient ...

Omnipresence

By Leftow, Brian

Western Scripture and religious experience find God present everywhere. Western thinkers make sense of this as their concepts of God dictate. Pantheists hold that God’s being everywhere is ...

Alexander, Samuel (1859–1938)

By Emmet, Dorothy

Alexander propounded a metaphysical system based on a view of Space-Time differentiated into ‘motions’ from which new qualities emerged at certain levels of organization; matter, life and mind ...

Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804)

By Guyer, Paul

Immanuel Kant was the paradigmatic philosopher of the European Enlightenment. He eradicated the last traces of the medieval worldview from modern philosophy, joined the key ideas of earlier ...

Alexander, Samuel (1859–1938)

By Fisher, A.R.J.

Samuel Alexander was a leading British philosopher of the early twentieth century. Along with G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, he is responsible for the rise of realism in ...

Relativity theory, philosophical significance of

By Redhead, Michael

There are two parts to Albert Einstein’s relativity theory, the special theory published in 1905 and the general theory published in its final mathematical form in 1915. The ...

Time, metaphysics of

By Dyke, Heather

Perhaps the most important dispute in the metaphysics of time is over the passage of time. There are two basic metaphysical theories of time in this dispute. There ...

Time, metaphysics of

Perhaps the most important dispute in the metaphysics of time is over the passage of time. There are two basic metaphysical theories of time in this dispute. There ...

Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804)

Immanuel Kant was the paradigmatic philosopher of the European Enlightenment. He eradicated the last traces of the medieval worldview from modern philosophy, joined the key ideas of earlier ...

Reichenbach, Hans (1891–1953)

By Salmon, Wesley C.

Philosophy of science flourished in the twentieth century, partly as a result of extraordinary progress in the sciences themselves, but mainly because of the efforts of philosophers who ...

Quantum logic

By Forrest, Peter

The topic of quantum logic was introduced by Birkhoff and von Neumann (1936), who described the formal properties of a certain algebraic system associated with quantum theory. To ...

Epicureanism

By Sedley, David

Epicureanism is one of the three dominant philosophies of the Hellenistic age. The school was founded by Epicurus (341–271 bc) (see Prolēpsis). Only small samples and indirect ...

Epicureanism

Epicureanism is one of the three dominant philosophies of the Hellenistic age. The school was founded by Epicurus (341–271 bc) (see Prolēpsis). Only small samples and indirect ...

General relativity, philosophical responses to

By Ryckman, T.A.

Much of the early philosophical attention given Einstein’s theory of gravitation was not uncontaminated by a grim post-war atmosphere conducive to public diversions, hysteria and national chauvinism. Most ...

Geometry, philosophical issues in

By Ryckman, T.A.

The least abstract form of mathematics, geometry has, from the earliest Hellenic times, been accorded a curious position straddling empirical and exact science. Its standing as an empirical ...

Motion

By Huggett, Nick

Motion is a kind of change, so it is worth beginning with change generally. Change is puzzling because it requires something both to remain the same (so one ...

Newton, Isaac (1642–1727)

By Biener, Zvi

Isaac Newton is best known as a mathematician and physicist. He invented the calculus, discovered universal gravitation and made significant advances in theoretical and experimental optics. His master-work ...

Category theory, applications to the foundations of mathematics

By McLarty, Colin

Since the 1960s Lawvere has distinguished two senses of the foundations of mathematics. Logical foundations use formal axioms to organize the subject. The other sense aims to survey ...

Einstein, Albert (1879–1955)

By Fine, Arthur; Howard, Don; Norton, John D.

Albert Einstein was a German-born Swiss and American naturalized physicist and the twentieth century’s most prominent scientist. He produced the special and general theories of relativity, which overturned ...

Nozick, Robert (1938–2002)

By Wolff, Jonathan; Blackburn, Simon

Although Robert Nozick published on an enormous range of topics, he is best known as a political philosopher, and especially for his powerful and entertaining statement of libertarianism. ...

Time travel

By Horwich, Paul

The prospect of a machine in which one could be transported through time is no longer mere fantasy, having become in this century the subject of serious scientific ...

Quantum measurement problem

By Bub, Jeffrey

In classical mechanics a measurement process can be represented, in principle, as an interaction between two systems, a measuring instrument M and a measured system S, ...