Abstract

Substantivalism is the thesis that space (or spacetime) is a concrete, irreducible entity. Early modern substantivalists face a problem: as space is often held to possess properties that are traditionally only attributed to God – including eternality, infinity and immutability – early moderns who argue that space is a substance run the risk of ‘polytheistic blasphemy’, the blasphemy of positing a second God. Early moderns generally take one of two strategies to avoid this: they either claim like Descartes that space is a substance but deny that it has divine properties, or they claim like Newton that space has divine properties but deny that it is a substance. In the early eighteenth century, the English philosopher Catharine Cockburn puts forward a ‘new’ account of substantival space inspired by a neo-Platonic thesis known as the Great Chain of Being. This paper examines that account, and the novel third solution it offers.