Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The World of Perception - Timothy R. Quigley

of this approach, an idea which seems at first sight to be theclearest of all: the concept of space. Classical science is basedon a clear distinction between space and the physical world.Thus space is the uniform medium in which things arearranged in three dimensions and in which they remain thesame regardless of the position they occupy. In many cases, theproperties of an object are seen to change when the object ismoved. If an object is moved from the pole to the equator, itsweight and perhaps even its shape will change, on account ofthe rise in temperature. Yet neither of these changes – ofweight and shape – can be attributed to the movement assuch: space is the same at the pole as at the equator. The variationwhich occurs from one place to the other is one ofphysical conditions, of temperature. Thus the fields of geometryand physics remain entirely distinct: the form and contentof the world do not mix. The geometrical properties of theobject would remain the same after the move, were it not forthe variation in physical conditions to which it is also subject.Or so it was assumed in classical science. Everything changesif, with the advent of so-called non-Euclidean geometry, wecome to think of space itself as curved and use this to explainhow things can change simply by being moved. Thus space iscomposed of a variety of different regions and dimensions,which can no longer be thought of as interchangeable andspace