But, Bill, your dissertation on space has nothing to do with Space!! It is just about trace density on metallic surfaces, the intricacy of reliable bit-signaling at very small scales.

Now, Space itself--THERE is something worthpondering. Not the vast number of objects bouncing about in it, but why it is there at all. Even the big bang doesn't explain it, since one can only presume it must have had some space to bang into or to exist as a super-dense pre-bang singularity or whatver it was just before it banged.

Now, here's the real interesting question. You, I am sure, are in league with the many, many observers who assert that space is a function of mass, especially since Einstein demonstrated that large masses bend space.

But it is just possible that space is actually only secondarily linked to mass and is, in its origins, a byproduct of viewing itself, manufactured as a means to view dimensionality.

As to time -- well, see, some folks ain't quite as mechanistical as you might like, and some of them operate on "Moi time", the measure of their own sense of action in space, rather than surrendering the time-sense to some external ratchet and pawl mechanism somewhere, or a whirling rock. This is a matter of subjective preference, of course, and very irritiating to those who appreciate the mastery of Mechanism as a means for imposing order.

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