Chapter 3 Identity, Spacetime, and Cosmology

Abstract

Abstract Modern cosmology treats space and time, or rather space-time, as concrete particulars. The General Theory of Relativity combines the distribution of matter and energy with the curvature of space-time. Here space-time appears as a concrete entity which affects matter and energy and is affected by the things in it. I question the idea that space-time is a concrete existing entity, which both substantivalism and reductive relationism maintain. Instead I propose an alternative view, which may be called non-reductive relationism, by arguing that space and time are abstract entities based on extension and changes.