• This is the podcast I’m referring to: 268 | Matt Strassler on Relativity, Fields, and the Language of Reality
  

• Einstein famously said that space is dead long live spacetime.
  
• But a century after Einstein’s claim space is still alive and well in physics.
  
• Spacetime never replaced the pre-Einstein conception of metaphysical space.
  
• On the contrary, now both space and spacetime are used case by case as needed.
  
• This is very convenient. It is convenient but it is not physics. This is called casuistry. Casuistry means explaining every phenomenon case by case by inventing a theory particular to that phenomenon. This is the familiar pre-scientific point of view where humans defined a deity to explain every new phenomenon. Thanks to modern careerist physicists we are back to marketing fairy tales as science.
  
• I used to think that Einstein was right and spacetime made space redundant in physics but no, this never happened.
  
• So, when I read physicists Matt Strassler attributing a property like curvature to space I questioned his choice of words. I thought spacetime replaced space and it was spacetime that was curved.
  
• But Strassler replied that even though spacetime would have been more correct it is common to use both space and spacetime. He linked to a mathematical gimmick physicists apply to spacetime to slice it into “space-like” hyper surfaces. This is called foliation. So physicists mathematically sliced a spacetime and called each slice a space-like surface. (I say “a spacetime” because there are an infinite number of spacetimes in physics.) In his comment, Strassler implied that when he used the word space he meant those mathematical slices. I must disagree with this.
  
• As I was pondering the subject, YouTube algorithm, who usually knows what you are pondering about, suggested Matt Strassler’s podcast with another physicist/philosophist, Sean Carroll.
  
• I really enjoyed this podcast. It was a huge revelation for me. For some reason, both Matt Strassler and Sean Carroll were very relaxed, not defensive about physics, as physicists usually are, and freely talked about many interesting philosophical topics.
  
• I collected sentences where they mentioned space and spacetime and I tried to understand how they used these two words.
  
• My conclusion is that Strassler and Carroll discuss the old scholastic concept of Space not as physicists but as two philosophers.
  
• Old scholastic doctors such as Leibniz, Descartes, Newton and Berkeley would have enjoyed this discussion of Space by two kindred spirits. At some point Sean Carroll even asks Matt Strassler if he was familiar with Clarke-Leibniz correspondence where they discuss the concept of Space. Like Strassler and Caroll, Clarke and Leibniz too was trying to find out if space was physical or not.
  
• After reading the transcript of the podcast carefully I concluded that the word “space” was never used by Strassler in the meaning of spacetime slices but used only as pre-Einstein and pre-spacetime meaning of philosophical Space.
  
• To answer my own question: Both space and spacetime are used in physics. This “physical” space is the “space” used in the word “spacetime”. This space is not a slice of spacetime but it is the old scholastic Space. But this is absurd. Space exists in the entire universe. Space is “the ‘arena’ in which all physical processes occur”. In fact, space makes up the universe. But the same is also true for spacetime. Spacetime is “the ‘arena’ in which all physical processes occur.” But spacetime is not space and space is not spacetime. Space and spacetime are totally different furnitures, they cannot co-exist. But in physics they do co-exist. How can that be? I think that when a physicist is in general relativity mode the universe is spacetime. When he is back to Newtonian mode, the universe instantly switches to being a space universe. This is possible, why not. In modern physics anything goes.
  
• Let me give an analogous example from astronomy. For thousand years astronomers believed that planets were held in orbit by crystalline spheres. These spheres were assumed to be real material objects made from a glass like hard and transparent substance. But then Tycho Brahe showed that crystalline spheres did not exist and astronomers were honest enough to give up their belief in these spheres. No one tried to keep the spheres in some cases and ignore them in other cases. But physicists are not an honest bunch. They keep both space and spacetime which are two concepts that exclude each other. The world is either made of space or spacetime. You cannot have both. But physicists have been finding “mathematical” ways to eat their cake and also have it for so long that now they are getting more and more arrogant with their absurd theories.
  

• Below are my comments to quotes I culled from the podcast. SC: Sean Carroll, MS: Matt Strassler:
  

SC: what if you add fields to it and you take a very different approach, really starting with relativity and spacetime and mass and how those things work.

1. It looks like the theory of relativity and spacetime go together, outside of relativity theory spacetime does not exist.
   
2. We know that General Relativity is used only to describe a very limited range of events always far far away where energies are said to be “relativistic”. In the rest of the universe General Relativity is not valid and there is no spacetime but only space. This is how it works in practice. The euphemism is that “in ‘normal’ speeds Einstein reduces to Newton”. No it doesn’t. There can never be a transition from the non-linear mechanism of spacetime to linear Newtonian space. But this is academic. Neither spacetime nor space enter into calculations of orbits. Spacetime is an academic toy physicists play with to to earn academic points.
   
3. We already know that GR is valid only in a narrow theater where things are moving close to speed of light.
   
4. Since only light moves with the speed of light anyone who is not a photon cannot move with speeds approaching the speed of light. But physicists who are not only crummy philosophists but bad science fiction writers find it totally normal for humans to travel with the speed of light to nearby stars etc. “One of the twins…” blah blah blah… Unless you have the ability to transform yourself into a photon you cannot travel with the speed of light and live to tell about your misadventures in distant black holes.
   
5. Ha, ha, this is funny. One must be really too naive to say something like this. In GR anything goes. You just need to find the right solution to EFE for your problem and since there are an infinite number of solution, it shouldn’t be too hard to cook up a bespoke solution to suit your needs. Or easier still, you can pick and choose one of the named spacetimes and modify it and add your own name at the end. For instance, one can do wonders with a spacetime named “Reissner-Nordström-Kerr-Minkowski-John Doe Spacetime”. No one can deny the authenticity of your spacetime because it is a modification of already established official spacetime. Of course, you and your cat can travel with the speed of light, mathematics has no problem with that. All we have to do is to pick up an appropriate spacetime from the shelf and apply the appropriate solution to Einstein’s equations. We have a spacetime for any contingency. We can even have spacetime for universes that do not have spacetimes.
   
6. We can even have spacetimes that transform themselves into space when the physicist in charge needs to work with space. Academic physics is great. Very entertaining. Why not. The joke is on physics, one of the oldest sciences is being corrupted by charlatans who call themselves physicists.
   

MS: because it’s what leads to Einstein’s conception that gravity could be an aspect of the geometry of space and time, rather than some just generalized force.

1. I note that here Strassler is not saying spacetime but space. But since we are talking about Einstein’s gravitation and Einstein made gravity an aspect of the geometry of spacetime not space, the correct way is to say “gravity is an aspect of spacetime.”
   
2. From this I deduce that in physics “space” and “spacetime” are used interchangeably.
   
3. So space can be used as a shorthand for spacetime. The way we call our friend “William”, “Bill”, physicists shorten “spacetime” to “space”.
   
4. But technically this is wrong.
   
5. Strassler told me “spacetime is more correct”. No. Using space when one needs to use spacetime is wrong.
   

MS: And then it does follow from mathematical consistency that you must be able to interpret space and time in terms of, interpret gravity in terms of the geometry of space and time.

1. “Mathematical consistency in physics”?? Physicists use mathematics as false witness to make their science fiction to look scientific.
   
2. So this is wrong too. We are not talking about the geometry of space and the geometry of time. We are talking about the geometry of spacetime.
   
3. It is clear that Strassler is not thinking spacetime.
   
4. For him, space and time and spacetime exist as independent entities.
   
5. But even in spacetime, space and time are independent axes.
   
6. So they are independent anyway.
   

MS: But since the ether apparently is everywhere in space, after all light goes through universe from all directions and for many places, then you would conclude that Galileo’s idea, although it might apply to some things, is not fundamentally correct. And so, Michelson’s experiment, had it shown a difference in the speed of light from different directions would have been the death row for Galileo’s relativity.

1. I noticed that physicists assume that space is a container. Einstein too sees space as a container.
   
2. Is space a container?
   
3. Also another issue that I need to clarify is that the space we are talking about here is the philosophical Space with capital S.
   
4. We are not discussing a measurable physical quantity but a metaphysical concept.
   
5. This is how equivocation works in physics. In this case the equivocation is played out with the measurable quantity which is length and the name physicists gave to length, namely, Space. We can only measure lengths. Physicists measure lengths too but they give names to lengths. In this case they measure a length and call it Space. Then, they conflate and equivocate between space and length and the philosophical Space. Physicists really believe that because they name a coordinate axis “space” they measured space. This is called cargo cult. In cargo cult you reify names. You build a plane from tree branches and you expect that plane to fly because you called it a “plane”. Modern theoretical physics is cargo cult. Academic physics is based on equivocation and reification of names.
   

MS: And that was an extraordinary thing to point out, obviously one of the great ideas in scientific history because it showed that the only way to reconcile light’s amazing ability to travel the universe is to give up your notions how space and time work.

1. It looks like for physicists space and time as independent entities come more naturally. They speak about space and time not spacetime.
   
2. And how does space work? How does time work? What ideas we are supposed to give up?
   

SC: …why don’t people consider special relativity as one of the great triumphs of unification of physics, ’cause it unified space and time together.

1. Unification of space and time means that a time axis is added to the usual 3 space axes.
   
2. This means that space and time still exist independently on these axes, “spacetime” is only the name of this set of axes.
   
3. And again, Strassler and Carroll are talking about the philosophical Space and the philosophical Time. These are not physical, measurable quantities.
   
4. We can only measure lengths. We measure lengths on these axes and we claim to have measured Space. This is cargo cult. This is pathetic.
   

SC: but it leaves us hanging a little bit with this issue of whether space or spacetime, if you want, is a medium by itself. It’s not, the ether we can’t measure our velocity with respect to it, but it’s something, it has a geometry, et cetera, how are we supposed to think about space and spacetime?

1. Sean Carroll is asking if space and spacetime are mediums like the old ether was a medium.
   
2. There is also the question if space is a container. If stuff are in space. The same for spacetime. Is spacetime a container?
   
3. You see these are very ancient scholastic questions. These are metaphysical topics that scholastic doctors of philosophy have been studying ever since scholasticism existed.
   
4. From these discussions we see that physicists too love this old scholastic topic. Are physicists doctors of philosophy? Of course. They are proud doctors of philosophy. They spend years to obtain their PhDs. But they face a dilemma. They get a doctorate in philosophy without studying one line of philosophy, plus, they are taught to hate philosophy. In the culture of physics philosophy is a dirty word. So, doctors of philosophy who know zilch about philosophy now discuss the oldest metaphysical topic, space! They even admit that they don’t know the history of the topic they are pontificating about.
   
5. In any case, from this sentence, it is clear that, disregarding Einstein, physicists never replaced space with spacetime. This is also proved by the old cliché that “the universe is expanding.” This sentence is always qualified by saying that it is the space which is expanding. Why not spacetime? So according to Einstein spacetime replaced space, and the universe is permeated with spacetime, that is, the universe is spacetime, but it is the space which is expanding. This is of course rhetorical sophistry of the most blatant kind. This is charlatanism.
   

MS: thanks to Einstein, that space and time is somehow thought of together, they’re kind of like a fabric in that they can stretch in the expanding universe, that’s what’s happening, they can warp, that’s what gives us gravity, they can ripple, that’s what gives gravitational waves,

1. Here “fabric” simply refers to a mathematical grid. Physicists reified the grid!
   
2. You see how careless physicists are with language. Here, what does the adverb “they” refer to? It refers to space and time individually. So he says that time and space can stretch in the expanding universe. But he just said above that only the space expands not time. No worries, in physics, contradiction is legal because equivocation is legal. Physicists are masters of all kinds of rhetorical maneuvering to deceive us and ultimately themselves.
   
3. Same with spacetime. We are familiar with the photoshop graphic of a mass stretching the “spacetime”. This is called photoshop physics. Of course, this is silly, physicists know it is silly and when you call their bluff they’ll simply say that this is just a visiualization we have the equation in our possession that we can throw at you but you wouldn’t understand them so we save you from exposing yourself as ignoramouses blah blah blah…
   
4. What is warping? Space and time are warping. Why isn’t he saying “spacetime” is warping? Who cares. He knows that all these are academic nonsense. Neither space nor time enter the functional equations. Functional equations can only contain measurable quantities. Space and Time are not measurable quantities. These are absolute philosophical concepts. But because physicists named one of the axes “time” they think they measure the philosophical time. This is called reification of the axes.
   
5. What is rippling? Space and time? No. It is the reified mathematical gird which is warping. But spacetime should ripple because the universe is spacetime. Well, true, but case by case as needed. If spacetime doesn’t work for us we just say space. The universe can switch back and forth from being space to being spacetime. The universe is very nice and see no problem accommodating these arrogant physicists.
   

MS: So to say it again, space as sort of a thing, does stuff, but we are not able to measure whether we are moving through [space], and more generally, we’re not able to measure [space’s] presence or [space’s]… We can see some of the things [space] does, and yet we can’t see kind of what [space] is, we can’t grab hold of [space] or bottle [space]. [Space] is not like a substance, the way water is a substance or like any other substance we’re used to. And so this conflict between a substance-like thing which acts like it’s there, and this thing which sometimes act like it’s nothingness, that fundamental conflict is a deep conceptual conflict for our brains. The math is okay with it, but it’s such a deep problem that it might even make you wonder whether space is real

1. In order to make clear that he is talking about “space” I changed the adverb “it” to “space” in brackets.
   
2. This paragraph is a typical scholastic, philosophical and metaphysical discussion on the old concept of space.
   
3. Here obviously Strassler is not referring to space-like slices of foliated spacetime. He is referring to pre-Einstein concept of metaphysical space that scholastic philosophers have been studying for millennia.
   
4. This is an undeniable proof that space was never replaced by spacetime as claimed by Einstein.
   
5. Both space and spacetime exist in physics. Physicists use one or the other as the case may be. This is cargo cult. But physicists have no qualms about defining the universe as space and spacetime. If the universe is space then it cannot be spacetime. That is, if physics were to be a science. Physics is not science it is academic scholasticism. These absurd theories are promoted by fame seeking physicists to gain fame and money. They are charlatans.
   
6. And to claim that math is okey with it does not change the fact that you have been discoursing about a metaphysical topic.
   

MS: But there is also the possibility that even the notion of space is an approximation to something far stranger,

1. Here once again, in the minds of modern physicists space as an independent entity exists. Spacetime never replaced space. Space and spacetime coexist.
   

MS: we have found equations in which space is an epiphenomenon, an emergent concept, and the basic thing you start with is just a very large collection of objects that don’t have any notion of space at all.

1. This is string theory BS. Space is just a name. Can a name be said to be “emergent.”
   
2. But what this tells me is that in physics currently the concept of space is not well-defined. Physicists are still searching for definition of space. But this is philosophy, this is metaphysics. And physicists know nothing about philosophy. Any statement by a physicist about the philosophical Space is an amateurish opinion no more authoritative then mine or yours. So how come physicists can talk with such authority about Space? Philosophers manqué are trying to make philosophy.
   
3. An academic field such as physics where definitions are not bijective cannot be scientific field, it can only be a scholastic sophistry where practioners argue by authority and try to establish their own meaning of the same word over their rivals. This is the definition of scholasticism, right?
   
4. They are talking about if space is real.
   
5. As far as physics is concerned space is not real because no term for “Space” enter functional equations. Physicists read length measurement as Space. Again this is cargo cult.
   
6. Imagine taking a wooden ruler and claiming that “space is wooden” because you measured lengths with that ruler. This is refication. This is what physicists do!
   
7. It doesn’t matter if space exists or not because functional equations used in calculations of orbits do not contain any terms for the philosophical Space.
   

SC: Good. But this question of the realness of space, the thinginess of space, I don’t know if you know, do you know about the Clarke-Leibniz correspondence? Have you heard this principle before?

1. To reinforce the fact that they are conducting a scholastic debate about Space, Sean Carroll asks Matt Strassler if he is familiar with Clarke-Leibniz correspondence.
   
2. Yes, this is exactly what they are doing. Such scholastic philosophers as Leibniz, Clarke, Newton, Descartes, Berkeley all would have been very interested in this podcast but they would have been surprised that after 300 years their scholastic offsprings still discuss the same topics altough they are totally ignorant of philosophy.
   

SC: Is space relational or substantival, is it a thing or is it just a collection of relations?

1. Do we need space for relations to exist?
   
2. I’m just pointing out that this is not physics, this metaphysics because the Space that they are talking about is not a measurable quantity. It is sad for physics that physicists think they are measuring “Space” because they labeled one of the axes “space”. The more I look the more physics looks like cargo cult.
   

SC: But another fact to keep in the back of our minds when we’re contemplating that question is that space isn’t really empty or it’s not a featureless anyway, ’cause it’s filled with all of these fields like the electromagnetic field.

1. Again and again physicists talk about space as an independent entity separate from spacetime. Even Einstein who claimed that space no longer existed as an independent entity talked about space as an independent entity, for instance, when he said, “there is no space withoul field.”
   
2. Einstein goofed. His spacetime never replaced space.
   
3. Einstein added Time as an axis to the 3 other axes and called these axes “spacetime”. Spacetime is merely the name of these axes.
   
4. But these axes do not refer to the philosophical Space and philosophical Time. They are axes. We can only measure lengths on these axes.
   
5. Space and Time are mere labels physicists gave to these axes. On an axis we can only measure length. Even if you have 4 axes (4 dimensions) on \(n\) axes (\(n\) dimensions) you still measure nothing but length.
   
6. We may as well name our 4 axes Length1, Length2, Length3, Length4, because we only measure lengths on these axes. Apparently, time axis has a different scale. Whatever. In summary, Einstein and Co., or Einstein and Disciples, reified these axes and built a Rube Goldberg edifice using equivocation as their cement.
   
7. This is great. Great in the sense of scholasticism. Because the more absurd and complex and the more it is full of equivocation the more business of our doctors philosophy to write commentary about and reveal the secrets of the universe to us poor laymen.
   

MS: But in the case of gravity, the gravitational field is telling you about the property of space, which we call curvature, the degree to which it’s warped.

1. And, yes the field! In my equivocation index the word field has a value of infinite. In term of equivocation it breaks the charts. A field can be anything and everything.
   
2. But notice again, Strassler is saying gravitational field is a property of space. He forgot about spacetime. He forgot that spacetime replaced space as ordered by Einstein.
   
3. Space is warped. Spacetime is warped. Field is warped. Physicists’ mind is warped. Logic is warped… But the only thing which is really warped is the reified mathematical grid invented by physicists called metric. Space, spacetime are not metrics.
   

MS: So it is possible that the electromagnetic field is telling us some property of space and time that is not obvious, some sort of hidden property that we have yet to learn.

1. Physicists love “hidden”. They love to make hidden assumptions too and fail to tell us what they secretly assumed.
   

MS: but it is an example of a context in which the luminiferous ether does exist. It’s a part of spacetime. And so it may be that this notion that space and time are a substance that has many properties and those properties are the fields of nature, that may be a perspective which is at least useful and maybe even somewhat fundamental. But we still have to deal with the fact that space is very strange because you can’t measure your motion with respect to [space]. So if it’s like a material, it’s not like anything we’ve ever seen.

1. This paragraph makes it clear how physicists confuse themselves with their own heavy equivocation.
   
2. He declares that ether is a property of spacetime. So he assumes that space and time as independent entities do not exist as Einstein said. But in the next sentence he forgets what he wrote and treats space and time as independent entities. Then he conflates ether and space. At the end of the day we don’t know how physicists define space. But as I said, this is irrelevant. However you define space the functional equations will still work because there are no term in equations for the metaphysical Time and metaphysical Space. Time and Space exist only for philosophers manqués to pontificate about. Physicist=Philosophist
   
3. Here another possibility is that he is being careless with language. The way we shorten “William” to “Bill” maybe he is just using “space” but he means “spacetime.” This whole thing is academic so it doesn’t matter.
   
4. After all physics is hard. You have experimental constraints. Philosophy is cheap because for a physicist philosophy is just talk.
   

SC: we physicists are saying because on the one hand we’re saying gravity’s not a force, right? Einstein seemed to imply that gravity is a feature of spacetime, not a force. On the other hand, it’s a particle, just like the photon is a particle, which makes it seem kind of force-like.

1. “Gravity is not a force” is the mother of all equivocations in physics. Gravity is both a force not a force in physics. Furthermore, we have double whammy here, force is a force and is not a force in physics. If you start with these assumptions your charlatanism is guaranteed.
   

MS: It’s the property of spacetime, which we call curvature.

1. Above he also said that curvature is a property of space.
   

MS: you would discover that there’s something wrong about the way you’re thinking of space and time.

1. According to Einstein we are not supposed to think about space and time but spacetime
   

SC: I would say there’s a language that says gravity’s not a force, it’s the curvature of spacetime.

1. Yes, that’s another favorite equivocation. In physics gravity is both a force and not a force at the same time case by case as needed. Cargo cult physics. Rhetorical sophistry. Mumbo jumbo. Play on words. Doctors of philosophy. Rube Goldberg machines… These things come to mind when I think about physics.
   

1. Einstein’s original quote about space replacing spacetime is here