pace is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative

position and direction.[1] Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although
modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-
dimensional continuum known as spacetime. The concept of space is considered to be of
fundamental importance to an understanding of the physical universe. However, disagreement
continues between philosophers over whether it is itself an entity, a relationship between entities,
or part of a conceptual framework.
Debates concerning the nature, essence and the mode of existence of space date back to
antiquity; namely, to treatises like the Timaeus of Plato, or Socrates in his reflections on what the
Greeks called khôra (i.e. "space"), or in the Physics of Aristotle(Book IV, Delta) in the definition
of topos (i.e. place), or in the later "geometrical conception of place" as "space qua extension" in
the Discourse on Place (Qawl fi al-Makan) of the 11th-century Arab polymath Alhazen.[2] Many of
these classical philosophical questions were discussed in the Renaissance and then
reformulated in the 17th century, particularly during the early development of classical
mechanics. In Isaac Newton's view, space was absolute—in the sense that it existed
permanently and independently of whether there was any matter in the space. [3] Other natural
philosophers, notably Gottfried Leibniz, thought instead that space was in fact a collection of
relations between objects, given by their distance and directionfrom one another. In the 18th
century, the philosopher and theologian George Berkeley attempted to refute the "visibility of
spatial depth" in his Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision. Later, the metaphysician Immanuel
Kant said that the concepts of space and time are not empirical ones derived from experiences of
the outside world—they are elements of an already given systematic framework that humans
possess and use to structure all experiences. Kant referred to the experience of "space" in
his Critique of Pure Reason as being a subjective "pure a priori form of intuition".
In the 19th and 20th centuries mathematicians began to examine geometries that are non-
Euclidean, in which space is conceived as curved, rather than flat. According to Albert Einstein's
theory of general relativity, space around gravitational fields deviates from Euclidean space.
[4]
Experimental tests of general relativity have confirmed that non-Euclidean geometries provide
a better model for the shape of space.