ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the outset, that there are various metaphysical issues connected with space: structure at the very small and very large scales, dimensionality, uniqueness, topology and geometry. An initial characterization of space might run along the lines: The Void Conception: Space in itself is nothing at all; it has no intrinsic features of its own, it is mere absence. According to the cosmologies of Aristotle and Ptolemy, which dominated scientific thought until the late middle Ages, the universe is divided into two regions: the heavenly and the sub-lunary. The world 'Pleasantville' is the sole planet orbiting a solitary star located in otherwise empty space. As Barman notes that 'there are almost as many versions of relationism as there are relationists'. From the Gaussian perspective, the individual material bodies scattered through the void are each island universes; since they are not linked by continuous paths through space, they are not spatially related, and so at no distance from one another.
