Contemporary psychiatry faces serious challenges because it has failed to incorporate accumulated knowledge from basic neuroscience, neurophilosophy, and brain–mind relation studies. As a consequence, it has limited explanatory power, and effective treatment options are hard to come by. A new conceptual framework for understanding mental health based on underlying neurobiological spatial-temporal mechanisms of mental disorders (already gained by the experimental studies) is beginning to emerge.

Information space and time in their socio-cultural dimension act as knowledge components of being, and, consequently, the most important regulator of social relations. At the same time, the social and cultural dominants of the information space and time are determined by the creative activity of a person. In principle, a person is always focused on knowledge, where its elements interact in a comprehensive way, and not on information, in which there is a separation of its (...) elements from the spiritually observed cross-section of reality, and thus from reality, which does not lend itself to the construction of connections, and the construction somewhat reduces the elasticity of the structure of information space and time. (shrink)

Unsurpassed among books on space and time in terms of its insights and clarity, this volume by a world-famous mathematician can be appreciated by lay readers as ...

This article examines changing modalities of citizenship in a fast-moving, informationalized and connected world. The argument here is that, in an increasingly globalized economic, social and cultural environment, forms and practices of citizenship inevitably – and increasingly – fragment across space and time. While this tendency for citizenship to ‘shape-shift’ politically and socially is not new – and indeed while the spatial fragmentation of belonging has been frequently commented upon, particularly in relation to the claimed decline of the (...) bordered nation-state – the dimension of time in relationship to citizenship has been rather less well explored. By examining the interplay of space and time in contemporary citizenship, understood here in terms of civic and political engagement, identity and belonging, it becomes possible to understand how citizenship practices operate differentially according to degrees of spatial embeddedness, on the one hand, and degrees of temporal ‘thickness’, on the other. (shrink)

This article describes the debate about space and time in the early modern period focusing on the exchange between Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton. It provides a brief account of Galileo's critique of medieval cosmology, the finite, two-sphere cosmos with fixed places as well as a beginning and an end in time, the related account of motion as finite and in need of an external agent, and the too-limited use of geometry in mechanics. The article reviews in (...) some detail the achievements of Leibniz and Newton in order to make clear the differences in their views about space and time, construed in mathematical, metaphysical, and physical terms as they emerged in the Leibniz/Clarke correspondence. (shrink)

Property is a complex sign in semiotics. It is also the source of tension and conflict in law. This paper examines property in triadic terms consisting of what Charles S. Peirce would identify as the icon (firstness), the index (secondness), and the symbol (thirdness). From this perspective the paper explores the ideas of place, space, and time at the iconic level of the sign of property. Discussion addresses the way in which property serves as a coded system for (...) communicating information about a given community’s values and its cultural-interpretive hierarchy. Much like an aboriginal songline, property functions as a way of imprinting the land with impressions of social ordering related to place, space, and time. In the context of global trade we therefore observe property conflicts which are sometimes not so much about the technical language of property as they are about tensions among the embedded values in competing signs of property. (shrink)

Quantum gravity is expected to require modifications of the notions of space and time. I discuss and clarify how this happens in Loop Quantum Gravity.

Space and time are geometrical notions that Sophie Germain, a French mathematician, discusses on several occasions in her Pensées diverses, however not only in a geometrical way but also in terms of a philosophical and moral understanding: she speaks of a human’s lifespan, the space they occupy, their place in creation and the knowledge toward which they always aim. This mixture of mathematical and philosophical thinking brings out Germain’s dream: she wants to apply the language of numbers (...) to moral and political issues. As such this chapter aims to examine Germain’s mathematical understanding of space and time in order to discover her moral theory. Furthermore, in a purely hypothetical context (because one does not know which authors she has read), I compare Germain’s moral thinking to Pascal’s moral and mathematical thoughts in Pensées. We underline the possible inspiration by Pascal by highlighting the similarities between these authors concerning space and time, which both treat mathematically and philosophically. These authors agree that time and space can be measured, and thus provide constant and mathematically uniform elements. At the same time, time and space provide the framework for moral thinking. The latter is not “capable” of enjoying the present moment; he is on a quest for the future. For Germain, this results into knowledge, but for Pascal, this is a sign of an unhappy life in which people do not find rest and are constantly looking for a diversion. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Kedrov has reminded us that the development of knowledge proceeds from appearance to essence. That was also true of the development of notions about space and time. Leibniz, for example, defined space as the order of things existing at the same time. However, that definition is rather superficial, and it is only the development of physics, specifically relativity theory, which made it possible to penetrate more deeply into the nature of space and time and (...) to ascribe a precise and mathematically expressible notion to the well-known judgment to the effect that space and time are forms of the existence of matter. (shrink)

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the need to rethink the status of space and time which Kant considered to be a priori forms of sensibility was prompted by the emergence of new approaches to the methodology of scientific cognition. In neo-Kantian interpretation these cognitive forms acquire a special epistemological status, manifesting themselves in theoretical research as “pre-given” foundations of knowledge. It seems necessary to conduct a comparative analysis of two interconnected neo-Kantian concepts, of Hermann Cohen (...) and Ivan Lapshin. Studying Kant’s philosophy since his student days, Lapshin gradually came to the conclusion that the need to clarify and develop Kant’s transcendental method was dictated by the development of scientific knowledge. Indeed, the works of the Russian neo-Kantian contain echoes and polemical adjustments of Cohen’s spatio-temporal ideas. Our study has revealed common epistemological attitudes in Cohen and Lapshin: the wish to improve elements of Kantian philosophy, adjusting them to prove the possibility of scientific-theoretical cognition and of overcoming psychologism and developing the logicistic approach to the critique of cognition. Each of the two authors developed their own “mechanism” of reducing space and time to a range of intellectual procedures for the construction of the object of knowledge. In Cohen’s account space and time pre-establish the language of observation and found all scientific-theoretical work. Lapshin, on the other hand, in discussing the formal and substantive features of these categories (the introduction of “axioms” of time, the need to specify the concepts of time and space through other categories), notes that their use in scientific judgment implies an epistemological givenness of the concept of the object. This I see as a variant of solving one and the same epistemological task. I submit that Lapshin worked out an independent concept of space and time as cognitive forms that are congruent with the spirit of European neo-Kantianism and contemporary science. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant appears to make incompatible claims regarding the unitary natures of what he takes to be our a priori representations of space and time. I argue that these representations are unitary independently of all synthesis and explain how this avoids problems encountered by other positions regarding the Transcendental Deduction and its relation to the Transcendental Aesthetic in that work. Central is the claim that these representations (1) contain, when characterized as intuitions and (...) considered as prior to any affections of sensibility, only an infinitude of merely possible finite spatial and temporal representations, and (2) are representations that are merely transcendental grounds for the possibilities for receiving or generating finite representations in sensibility that are determined (immediately, in the case of reception) by means of syntheses that accord with the categories. (shrink)

This book presents an elementary but complete exposition of the relativistic theory of the measurement of intervals in space & time.

THE AUTHOR DISCUSSES SIMULTANEITY, ABSOLUTE SPACE AND TIME, THE NUMBER OF POSSIBLE DIMENSIONS, CAUSALITY, RIVAL SCIENTIFIC THEORIES OF THE SPATIO-TEMPORAL PROPERTIES OF THE UNIVERSE AND THE MEANING OF SPATIO-TEMPORAL TERMS IN ORDINARY AND SCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE. (BP, EDITED).

Here, formal tools are used to pose and answer several philosophical questions concerning space and time. The questions involve the properties of possible worlds allowed by the general theory of relativity. In particular, attention is given to various causal properties such as “determinism” and “time travel”.

A “frame of reference” is a standard relative to which motion and rest may be measured; any set of points or objects that are at rest relative to one another enables us, in principle, to describe the relative motions of bodies. A frame of reference is therefore a purely kinematical device, for the geometrical description of motion without regard to the masses or forces involved. A dynamical account of motion leads to the idea of an “inertial frame,” or a reference (...) frame relative to which motions have distinguished dynamical properties. For that reason an inertial frame has to be understood as a spatial reference frame together with some means of measuring time, so that uniform motions can be distinguished from accelerated motions. The laws of Newtonian dynamics provide a simple definition: an inertial frame is a reference-frame with a time-scale, relative to which the motion of a body not subject to forces is always rectilinear and uniform, accelerations are always proportional to and in the direction of applied forces, and applied forces are always met with equal and opposite reactions. It follows that, in an inertial frame, the center of mass of a system of bodies is always at rest or in uniform motion. It also follows that any other frame of reference moving uniformly relative to an inertial frame is also an inertial frame. For example, in Newtonian celestial mechanics, taking the “fixed stars” as a frame of reference, we can determine an inertial frame whose center is the center of mass of the solar system; relative to this frame, every acceleration of every planet can be accounted for as a gravitational interaction with some other planet in accord with Newton 's laws of motion. (shrink)

What is the relationship between space and time in the human mind? Studies in adults show an asymmetric relationship between mental representations of these basic dimensions of experience: Representations of time depend on space more than representations of space depend on time. Here we investigated the relationship between space and time in the developing mind. Native Greek‐speaking children watched movies of two animals traveling along parallel paths for different distances or durations and (...) judged the spatial and temporal aspects of these events (e.g., Which animal went for a longer distance, or a longer time?). Results showed a reliable cross‐dimensional asymmetry. For the same stimuli, spatial information influenced temporal judgments more than temporal information influenced spatial judgments. This pattern was robust to variations in the age of the participants and the type of linguistic framing used to elicit responses. This finding demonstrates a continuity between space‐time representations in children and adults, and informs theories of analog magnitude representation. (shrink)

The effective reasoning capability of an agent can be defined as its capability to infer, within a given space and time bound, facts that are logical consequences of its knowledge base. In this paper we show how to determine the effective reasoning capability of an agent with limited memory by encoding the agent as a transition system and automatically verifying whether a state where the agent believes a certain conclusion is reachable from the start state. We present experimental (...) results using the Model Based Planner (MBP) which illustrates how the length of the deduction varies for different memory sizes. (shrink)

Author demonstrates that Russell’s conception of space and time diverges from Kant’s transcendental aesthetics and leans towards logical and mathematical topology. Russell’s approach is grounded in analytical rather than synthetic judgments, contrasting with Kant’s perspective. The British philosopher develops a subjective-psychological model of space and time that complements the logical-mathematical model, serving as the foundation for human experience and cognition. This Russellian model considers the psychological aspects of perceptual and tactile space and time, highlighting (...) their intersection in human perception, which facilitates the experience. It represents a form of «return» to Kant’s subjective theory, albeit on psychological rather than transcendental principles. It is argued that Russell incorporates physical topology into subjective-psychological space and time because he views things as physical objects rather than a complex of sensory associations. This incorporation is indicative of Russell's commitment to neorealism. (shrink)

Europe: The Space and Time of ReflectionOn the Complutense Research Group La Europa de la Escritura.

Trendelenburg argued that Kant's arguments in support of transcendental idealism ignored the possibility that space and time are both ideal and real. Recently, Graham Bird has claimed that Trendelenburg (unlike his contemporary Kuno Fischer) misrepresented Kant, confusing two senses of . I defend Trendelenburg's : the ideas of space and time, as a priori and necessary, are ideal, but this does not exclude their validity in the noumenal realm. This undermines transcendental idealism. Bird's attempt to show (...) that the Analytic considers, but rejects, the alternative fails: an epistemological reading makes Kant accept the alternative, while an ontological reading makes him incoherent. As I demonstrate, Trendelenburg acknowledged the ambiguity of , focusing on the transcendental, not the empirical sense. Unlike Fischer, Bird denies Kant's commitment to things-in-themselves in favour of a descriptivist, non-ontological reading of transcendental idealism as an inventory of . But neither Bird's descriptivism, nor Fischer's commitment to things-in-themselves, answers Trendelenburg's sceptical worry about transcendental idealism. (shrink)

Summary From the following discussion, we conclude that: (a) the homogeneity of space implies (in special relativity) the homogeneity of time, and vice versa; (b) the assumption of homogeneity of space (or time) implies that the transformation formulae must be linear (see Equations (10) and (17)).

In the usual description of space and time, particles are represented by continuous world lines. We replace these world lines by discrete rows of points, obtaining a locally finite, partially ordered set. The “distances” between points along these discrete world lines, and also the “distances” between different world lines, are measured not simply as the distances within the space-time manifold in which the partially ordered set happens to be embedded, but rather in terms of the partially (...) ordered set itself. It is found that variations in the density of points of the partially ordered set produce corresponding variations in the scale of “distances” within the set. These variations produce a gravitational effect which is similar to that of the general theory of relativity. (shrink)

This is an interdisciplinary volume that focuses on the central topic of the representation of events, namely cross-cultural differences in representing time and space, as well as various aspects of the conceptualisation of space and time.

This collection focuses on the ontology of space and time. It is centred on the idea that the issues typically encountered in this area must be tackled from a multifarious perspective, paying attention to both a priori and a posteriori considerations. Several experts in this area contribute to this volume: G. Landini discusses how Russell’s conception of time features in his general philosophical perspective;D. Dieks proposes a middle course between substantivalist and relationist accounts of space-time;P. (...) Graziani argues that it is necessary to provide an account of the “synthetic procedures” implicit in the recourse to diagrams in Euclid’s Elements, while E. Mares comes to the conclusion that in Euclid’s Elements we should treat the parallel postulate as empirical and the postulate that space is continuous as a priori. M. Arsenijevi?/M. Adži? present an important formal result concerning two theories of the infinite two-dimensional continua, which sheds new light on the current dispute between gunkologists and pointilists; F. Orilia discusses two problems for presentism, one regarding the duration of the present and the other related to Zeno’s paradoxes. A. Iacona delves deep into logical matters by focusing on the so-called T×W modal frames in order to deal with the deteterminism-indeterminism controversy. D. Mancuso outlines a non-standard temporal model compatible with time travel, andV. Fano/G. Macchia discuss time travels in the light of an important foundational principle of modern cosmology, Weyl’s Principle. (shrink)

:This article focuses on historical queer cultural geographies of masculinities and to do so it focuses on two cases/places. The first is an archival case/place: a partial assembly of documents of beats and their uses during and in the wake of Gay Liberation in Australia. The second is a literary case/place: Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, a canonical twentieth-century imbrication of male homosexuality and geography. This article will seek to rationalize the mobilization of these two asynchronous cases/places through the insights (...) that both afford, when brought together, for elaborating contributions that queer readings of Nietzsche can make to contemporary queer theories of space, time and masculinities. (shrink)

Textbooks present classical particle and field physics as theories of physical systems situated in Newtonian absolute space. This absolute space has an influence on the evolution of physical processes, and can therefore be seen as a physical system itself; it is substantival. It turns out to be possible, however, to interpret the classical theories in another way. According to this rival interpretation, spatiotemporal position is a property of physical systems, and there is no substantival spacetime. The traditional objection (...) that such a relationist view could not cope with the existence of inertial effects and other manifestations of the causal efficacy of spacetime can be answered successfully. According to the new point of view, the spacetime manifold of classical physics is a purely representational device. It represents possible locations of physical objects or events; but these locations are physical properties inherent in the physical objects or events themselves and having no existence independently of them. In relativistic quantum field theory the physical meaning of the spacetime manifold becomes even less tangible. Not only does the manifold lose its status as a substantival container, but also its function as a representation of spacetime properties possessed by physical systems becomes problematic. 'Space and time' become ordering parameters in the web of properties of physical systems. They seem to regain their traditional meaning only in the non-relativistic limit in which the classical particle concept becomes approximately applicable. (shrink)

The traditional absolutist-relationist controversy about space and time conflates four distinct issues: existence, abstraction, relationality and relativity. Terms which are relational, relative or abstract may denote items which possess contingent properties. Possession of such properties, including topological and geometrical properties, is therefore no indication of logical type. To fail to recognise the possibility of spaces, times and space-times of various logical types is to risk conflating two distinct ontological issues: a metaphysical issue concerning the existence of abstract (...) objects and a question of physics concerning the existence of causally efficacious substrata which may or may not be needed to explain the contingent properties of the abstract objects. (shrink)

Part I. Space and Time in the History of Philosophy. The Concept of Space in Antiquity / Max Jammer. -- Aristotle and the Sea Battle / G.E.M. Anscombe. -- Questions About Time / St. Augustine. -- Space and Matter / Renè Descartes. -- Absolute Space and Time / Isaac Newton. -- The Relational Theory of Space and Time / Gottfried Leibniz. -- Place, Extension and Duration / John Locke. -- Transcendental Ideality (...) of Space and Time / Immanuel Kant. -- Mirror Images / Immanuel Kant. -- Newton's Views of Time, Space and Motion / Ernst Mach. -- The Unreality of Space and time / F.H. Bradley. -- Duration and Intuition / Henri Bergson. -- The Problem of Infinity Considered Historically / Bertrand Russell. -- Part II. Geomoetry and Physics. What is Geometry? / A.S. Eddington. -- Space and Geometry / Ernest Nagel. -- Non-Eucledian Spaces / Hans Reichenbach. -- Geometry and Definition of Congruence / Hans Reichenbach. -- Geometry as a Branch of Physics / H.P. Robertson. -- Part III. Space-Time and Relativity. Relativity / R.E. Peierls. -- Autobiographical Notes / Albert Einstein. -- The Four-Dimensional World / Moritz Schlick. -- Space and Time / H. Minkowski. The Philosophical Retention of Absolute Space in Einstein's General Theory of relativity / Adolf Grünbaum. -- Part IV. Recent Philosophical Analyses. Ostensible Temporality / C.D. Croad. -- Time : A Treatment of Some Puzzles / J.N. Findlay. -- Time and Language, and the Passage fo Time / Nelson Goodman. -- Time / W.V. Quine. -- Geometrical Objects / W.V. Quine. -- Spatial and Temporal Ananlogies and the Concept of Identity / Richard Taylor. -- Time, Irreversible Processes, and the Physical Status of Becoming / Adolf Grünbaum. (shrink)

Drawing on the work of Henri Lefebvre and Barbara Adam, Gender, Space, and Time is a brilliant study that offers a unique and original threefold conceptualization of how space and time is developed and applied in an empirical study of women's lives. Moss conceptualizes women as centers of action and demonstrates the ways in which they construct personal pathways, connect different spheres of experience, intergrate new time demands into the multiple rhythms of their everyday lives, (...) and carve out personal space. (shrink)

Recently it has been argued that there are conceivable situations in which we would be led to think of our experiences as belonging to two different, entirely disconnected spaces or times. From this it follows that there is no necessity in the claim that all our experiences must be conceived of as belonging together in one space or time. Let us call the claim that all our experiences must belong to one space and time the connectedness (...) hypothesis, and the counterclaim that there are conceivable situations in which we would be led to think of our experiences as belonging to disconnected spaces or times the discreteness hypothesis. Note that neither of these hypotheses is concerned with the nature of physical space or time: the connectedness hypothesis does not affirm that the universe can be composed only of worlds connected by some path through space or time; it affirms merely that whatever the state of the topology of the universe, we can conceive of our experiences only as related within a single space and time; the discreteness hypothesis does not affirm that the universe may be composed of two or more worlds not connected by some path through space or time; it affirms merely that it is possible for us to find ourselves in a situation where our experiences can be divided into two or more disjoint sets, such that the members of one set cannot be placed in any sort of spatiotemporal relation to the members of any other set. Perhaps either hypothesis could be used as a premise toward a conclusion about the nature of the physical world—but that would be another argument. (shrink)

The virtue of this book is that it brings together in one volume discussions related to our ordinary conception of space and time on the one hand and discussions related to the conception of space and time in contemporary physical theory on the other. Thus we have discussion of the topology, metrical geometry, and tri-dimensionality of space; absolute vs. relative space; the order and direction of time in physical theory; the size and physical (...) limits of the universe; and the beginning and end of the universe in contemporary cosmological theory. But in addition there is discussion of the problems of identifying objects in space and time, including problems of personal identity, the notion of place and its relation to matter, the ordinary conception of past and future, and other topics. The author works through this maze by making use of a distinction between the necessary and contingent properties of space and time. His manner of drawing the line between the necessary and contingent is surely the most controversial aspect of his book. Certain cosmological theories, for example, are ruled out on logical grounds despite the fact that they may be compatible with general relativity. But the author's arguments are challenging and are backed up by an extensive knowledge of contemporary physical theory as well as of recent philosophical discussion of space and time in the English speaking world.--R. H. K. (shrink)

In the course of his critique of the Buddhist doctrine of universal momentariness, Udayana argues for an isomorphism between our understandings of space and time, which is meant to undercut the Buddhists’ well-known “inference from existence.” The present paper examines these arguments from Udayana’s Ātmatattvaviveka, together with Ratnakīrti’s treatment of them in his Kṣaṇabhaṅgasiddhi Anvayātmikā. As an historical study, the paper aims to elucidate the connections between Udayana and Ratnakīrti, and the implications of those connections for the dependence (...) of the inference from existence upon various arguments which appear elsewhere in Ratnakīrti’s corpus. As a work of philosophical interpretation, the paper will clarify what is at stake in the local debate over the space–time isomorphism. Ratnakīrti’s position will best be understood as an account on which different simple causal properties are ascribed, or indexed, to an allegedly persisting entity at different times, while Udayana will prefer an account on which complex properties indexed to the place and/or time of the effect—for instance, “generating a sprout in this particular place” or “producing a visual awareness at a certain time”—will belong to a persisting thing throughout its entire existence. Furthermore, the acceptance or rejection of space and time as substantial entities in their own right, as distinct from the entities which are conventionally said to exist in space and time, will have important implications for the accounts of causality that each thinker can accept. (shrink)