ABSTRACT
A few pleasantries in a handful of letters were all that passed between the two giants of science and mathematics in the seventeenth century: Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz. In these letters there is little or no suggestion of the gulf between them on their attitudes towards the reality of space, time, and motion. Only in Leibniz’s correspondence with Samuel Clarke and Christian Huygens do we see any detailed contemporary debate on the issues which divide Newton and Leibniz. 1 Much of this debate is concerned with theological issues turning on the nature and the powers of God, but throughout there is a strong desire to clarify the concepts of space and time. The debate is provoked by Newton’s Principles of Natural Philosophy (Principia) and particularly by his assertion that space and time are absolute entities.
