ABSTRACT
In our monistic moments we can believe in any sort of unified space-time we like. If we were pluralists, but after the manner of G. W. Leibniz rather than I. Newton and J. Locke, we should have to have time much as we do, but could dispense with space, regarding it as an optional extra easily conformed to the requirements of the latest scientific theories. It is only if we believe in persons that we have to have time, and things which they can see and talk about, move and manipulate, and then have to have space with certain topological, and preferably with certain geometrical properties. The reason why we ascribe a certain topology and geometry to space is not that to ascribe any other would be inconsistent or self-contradictory, but that to do so would be awkward, inconvenient or incoherent.
