Abstract

One of the greatest achievements of modern physics is the discovery of spacetime by Hermann Minkowski. Still, talking about the ”discovery” of spacetime cannot be done without further questioning its ontological status. Did Minkowski discover a real physical substrate? What is the creative role of his scientific imagination in the process of discovery? To what extent the explanatory power of spacetime supports the conclusion that it is a true description of the physical world? I consider those questions in that paper, and I claim that for Minkowski’s discovery of spacetime, imagination and explanation work together in a fictionalist strategy. I explain why there is no reason to doubt the veracity of the discovery of spacetime and its physical reality.