Epilogue

the post-seventeenth century evolution of the standard dichotomy

Herbert Spiegelberg

pp. 303-324

in: Edward Slowik, The deep metaphysics of space, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

By way of conclusion, this final chapter will briefly explore the development of the standard dichotomy, substantivalism (absolutism) versus relationism, in the period after Newton, specifically, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Only a cursory synopsis of this rather intricate history can be offered, but many of the spatiotemporal concepts and strategies that would shape the future course of the standard dichotomy were in play during the late seventeenth century as well, and thus a full accounting of the spatiotemporal ontology of Leibniz and Newton's time merits an assessment of their content, function, and evolution. In §11.1, the decline of the seventeenth century's God-infused spatial metaphysics will be assessed, along with a survey of both the empiricist-centered replacement concepts and the transformation of the ontological dependence version of the property theory during the eighteenth century. Finally, Kant's unique relationist interpretation of Newtonian physics, along with its implications for the standard dichotomy, will round out the investigation in §11.2.