substantivalism
substantivalism noun: the doctrine that space and time have an existence independent of physical things.
Noun
substantivalism (plural substantivalisms)
- The doctrine that space and time have an existence independent of physical things.
- Several philosophers of science have argued that the general theory of relativity actually supports spacetime substantivalism (if not separate spatial and temporal substantivalisms) since it allows solutions consisting of nothing but a differentiable manifold with metric tensor field […]1994, John Stachel, edited by John Earman, Allen Janis, and Gerald J. Massey, Philosophical Problems of the Internal and External Worlds, →ISBN, page 143
- In it, Clarke defends on behalf of Newton a form of substantivalism according to which (absolute) space exists independently of matter and is as real as matter.2007 October 30, Gabriele Contessa, “A Note on the Nomic Possibility of a Dynamic Shift”, in Erkenntnis, volume 68, number 2, →DOI
Forms of substantivalism
| plural | substantivalisms |
|---|
Origin of substantivalism
From substantival + -ism.
Questions about substantivalism
- What does substantivalism mean?
- Substantivalism means the doctrine that space and time have an existence independent of physical things.
- What part of speech is substantivalism?
- Substantivalism is a noun.
- What is the plural of substantivalism?
- The plural of substantivalism is substantivalisms.
Words near substantivalism in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: substantivalism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “substantivalism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/substantivalism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.