ABSTRACT
Everything in the world is composed of ‘events’; that, at least, is the thesis I wish to maintain. An ‘event’, as I understand it, is something having a small finite duration and a small finite extension in space; or rather, in view of the theory of relativity, it is something occupying a small finite amount of space-time. If it has parts, these parts, I say, are again events, never something occupying a mere point or instant, whether in space, in time, or in space-time. The fact that an event occupies a finite amount of space-time does not prove that it has parts. Events are not impenetrable, as matter is supposed to be; on the contrary, every event in space-time is overlapped by other events. There is no reason to suppose that any of the events with which we are familiar are infinitely complex; on the contrary, everything known about the world is compatible with the view that every complex event has a finite number of parts. We do not know that this is the case, but it is an hypothesis which cannot be refuted and is simpler than any other possible hypothesis. I shall therefore adopt it as a working hypothesis in what follows.
