Page:Nature and Life (1934).pdf/34

is just there, in that region where it is; and it can be described without reference to the goings on in any other region of space. The empty space is the substratum for the passive geometrical relationships between material bodies. These relationships are bare, static facts and carry no consequences which are essentially necessary. For example, Newton’s law of gravitation expresses the changes of locomotion which are associated with the spatial relations of material bodies with each other. But this law of gravitation does not result from the Newtonian notion of mass combined with the notion of the occupancy of space, together with the Euclidean geometry. None of these notions either singly or in combination give the slightest warrant for the law of gravitation. Neither Archimedes, nor Galileo, by puzzling over theses notions, could have derived any suggestion for the gravitational law. According to the doctrine, space was the