by the
characteristics of nature; but all reasoning in science ultimately drops
its space-analysis and poses to itself the problem, 'Here is one
material entity, what is happening to it as a unit entity?' Yet this
material entity is still retaining its extension, and as thus extended
is a mere multiplicity. Thus there is an essential atomic property in
nature which is independent of the dissociation of extension. There is
something which in itself is one, and which is more than the logical
aggregate of entities occupying points within the volume which the unit
occupies. Indeed we may well be sceptical as to these ultimate entities
at points, and doubt whether there are any such entities at all. They
have the suspicious character that we are driven to accept them by
abstract logic and not by observed fact.

Time (in the current philosophy) does not exert the same disintegrating
effect on matter which occupies it. If matter occupies a duration of
time, the whole matter occupies every part of that duration. Thus the
connexion between matter and time differs from the connexion between
matter and space as expressed in current scientific philosophy. There is
obviously a greater difficulty in conceiving time as the outcome of
relations between different bits of matter than there is in the
analogous conception of space. At an instant distinct volumes of space
are occupied by distinct bits of matter. Accordingly there is so far no
intrinsic difficulty in conceiving that space is merely the resultant of
relations between the bits of matter. But in the one-dimensional time
the same bit of matter occupies different portions of time. Accordingly
time would have to be expressible in terms of the relations of a bit of
matter with itself. My own view is a belief in the relational theory
both of space and of time, and of disbelief in the current form of the
relational theory of space which exhibits bits of matter as the relata
for spatial relations. The true relata are events. The distinction which
I have just pointed out between time and space in their connexion with
matter makes it evident that any assimilation of time and space cannot
proceed along the traditional line of taking matter as a fundamental
element in space-formation.

The philosophy of nature took a wrong turn during its development by
Greek thought. This erroneous presupposition is vague and fluid in
Plato's _Timaeus_. The general groundwork of the thought is still
u