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SUMMARY:Catharine Cockburn on substantival space: a 'new' 18th-century sol
 ution - Emily Thomas (Philosophy\, Cambridge)
DTSTART:20121017T120000Z
DTEND:20121017T133000Z
UID:TALK40718@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Vashka dos Remedios
DESCRIPTION:Substantivalism is the thesis that space (or spacetime) is a c
 oncrete\, 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 - ea
 rly moderns who argue that space is a substance run the risk of 'polytheis
 tic blasphemy'\, the blasphemy of positing a second God. Early moderns gen
 erally take one of two strategies to avoid this: they either claim like De
 scartes 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 philosoph
 er Catharine Cockburn puts forward a 'new' account of substantival space i
 nspired by a neo-Platonic thesis known as the Great Chain of Being. This p
 aper examines that account\, and the novel third solution it offers.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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