ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the thesis that the physical world has a spatial aspect. That is, it is correct to say of some physical objects that they have particular geometrical shapes, and stand in various spatial relations to one another. The most recent wrinkle in the absolute/relational debate is an argument inspired by some remarks of Einstein and formalized by John Earman and John Norton that goes by the name “the hole argument”. The argument aims to show that an Absolutist about space–time will necessarily be committed to radical indeterminism in nature, at least if the laws of physics take a common mathematical form. The inevitable extension of the argument to space–time, the obscurity of the physical nature of a “vacuum,” and the unclarity of the significance of certain symmetries in the mathematical formalism all conspire to make it hard to even formulate clearly an Absolutist or Relationist version of contemporary physical theory.
