We generally think of space as emptiness and quite readily ignore it, jumping from sphere to cosmic sphere… but the space between the obvious objects in the universe is the same, exactly the same, as the space between our thoughts… or the space between the notes that makes the music (Claude Debussy)… or the space between our atomic structure.
We learned very early on, in English classes of all places, that Thoughts (ideas) are things. But it is being conscience of the space between them that differentiates us from the other mammals. If you say something negative to me, I can choose to be offended and react violently or I can choose relative indifference and accept your opinion as yours. My decision is “in the gap between the thoughts”, where other animals instinctively react.
If the above example seems to “airy” or “pseudo-scientific” for you, let’s take something solid in our observable surroundings, say a block of lead. We’ll all agree that although it “looks” solid, it is been repeatedly shown through the Scientific Method to be a mass of moving molecules with space between them.
As we further break this structure down, we find atoms; protons, electrons, neutrons, and croutons
all orbiting each other with the same precision of a solar system and let’s not ignore the space between them. [Apologies for the high-school physics/chemistry here, but it's foundational.]
Quantum Physics deals with this composition with names like quarks, bosons, & leptons. On this sub-atom level, there is no difference between the particles that make our block of lead different from a block of gold. It is the information and organization of these particles that makes the difference – again the space between.
If we can’t tell the difference between lead and gold on the sub-atomic level, could it be that we’re just standing too close to the trees to see the forest from our current perception of things Astronomical? Put another way, What if you could look back from far enough away so as not to see the space between the planets?
Let me interject here with a postulation that if you were able to remove just one of these sub-atomic particles of quanta from our sample structure, you would change it’s organization, and consequently its properties on our observable level. You might then make this analogous to removing just one human life energy from the face of the planet before its time, and begin to see the importance of every individual & the ripples our actions as a life-force create in the cosmos.
Biogeneticists are discovering in their work unraveling the double-helix structure of DNA that the mutagen & disease activities may actually be occurring in the space between the base pairs and not with the molecules themselves.
Einstein’s research on a Unified Theory was an attempt to unify the General Theory of Relativity (gravity as a property of the geometry of space and time – or spacetime) with that of electromagnetism and I think it is what led to work on a Theory of Everything. An excellent explanation of why our use of Mathematics may or may not be sufficient in understanding our perception of space is given by Mario Livio.
Maybe someday we’ll consider understanding pre-BigBang history – the creation of our world ex-nihilo (”our world” here being the entire cosmos, not just this particular ball of mud).
