Space 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 direction from 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.