After the Reluctant Universe: Dialogue I — On Space (and Why It Isn’t a Place)

Characters:

Professor Quillibrace

Mr Blottisham

Miss Elowen Stray

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Blottisham:

I assume we are now to discuss space itself. Vast, empty, waiting patiently for things to happen inside it.

Quillibrace:

That assumption is precisely what we are not going to do.

Elowen Stray:

So… space isn’t a container?

Quillibrace:

No.

Blottisham:

A fabric, then? Stretched, curved, possibly torn?

Quillibrace:

Also no.

Blottisham:

Then I’m already confused. Where are things, if not in space?

Quillibrace:

They are not in space. They are spatially related.

Elowen Stray:

That sounds like more than a grammatical correction.

Quillibrace:

It is an ontological one.

Blottisham:

But surely space must exist first, so relations can occur within it?

Quillibrace:

That is the mistake. Relations are not placed into space; space is abstracted from relations.

Elowen Stray:

So space isn’t something we discover, but something we derive?

Quillibrace:

Exactly. A system of constraints that stabilises certain relational regularities.

Blottisham:

Constraints? Space feels rather… expansive for that.

Quillibrace:

Expansiveness is a metaphor born of habit. What matters is that spatiality allows certain distinctions—near and far, adjacent and separated—to be made coherently.

Elowen Stray:

So space is a way of keeping relations intelligible?

Quillibrace:

A very good way of putting it.

Blottisham:

But physics measures space. Rulers, coordinates, metrics—

Quillibrace:

—measurements presuppose the construal. They do not establish its ontological priority.

Blottisham:

Then when we speak of space “existing”, what are we really saying?

Quillibrace:

That a particular relational scheme has been stabilised well enough to be treated as background.

Elowen Stray:

And when that scheme fails?

Quillibrace:

We call it exotic. Or extreme. Or paradoxical.

Blottisham:

You mean black holes? Cosmology? The edges of the universe?

Quillibrace:

I mean any situation where we insist on treating space as a thing rather than a condition.

Elowen Stray:

So space isn’t where things are…

Quillibrace:

…it is how certain relations hold together.

Blottisham:

I find this deeply unsettling. I rather liked knowing where I was.

Quillibrace:

You still do. Nothing practical has changed.

Blottisham:

Then why make such a fuss?

Quillibrace:

Because when we forget this distinction, we begin asking nonsensical questions.

Elowen Stray:

Such as?

Quillibrace:

What space is made of.

Where space ends.

What existed before space.

Blottisham:

Those are very fine questions!

Quillibrace:

They are very fine category errors.

Elowen Stray:

So when space “curves”…

Quillibrace:

…it is not a thing bending, but a relational constraint changing.

Blottisham:

And when space “expands”…

Quillibrace:

…the relations re-scale. Nothing moves into anything else.

Elowen Stray:

Then the universe isn’t sitting in space at all.

Quillibrace:

No. Space is one of the ways the universe is made intelligible—until it isn’t.

Blottisham:

I feel as though the floor has vanished beneath me.

Quillibrace:

On the contrary. You have simply noticed that the floor was never a substance.

Elowen Stray:

And once we see that…

Quillibrace:

…many mysteries lose their theatrical glow.

Blottisham:

I dislike this trend.

Quillibrace:

You will like it even less when we discuss time.

(A pause. Elowen smiles, not entirely certain she understands, but quite certain something important has shifted.)