Introduction: Ideas of Space and Their Relation to Experience in Early Modern Philosophy

Abstract

This introduction has two aims. The first is to describe synthetically, for each author belonging to the tradition of classical empiricism, the main characteristics of his approach, the notion of space that results from it, and the place it occupies within his philosophy. The second is to show that, despite the individual particularities of each theory, there are some common features concerning both the content of the notion of space and the method adopted for its determination. This will lead us to an examination of the differences between varying conceptions of the contents of spatial experience, as well as of the diverse ways in which these are analysed by classical empiricists. We will provide a general framework in which to situate the more specific and in-depth discussions that will be developed in the following chapters, of which we will give a brief overview at the end of this introduction.