Parts and Places: The Structures of Spatial Representation

Thinking about space is thinking about spatial things. The table is onthe carpet; hence the carpet is under the table. The vase is in the box; hence thebox is not in the vase. But what does it mean for an object to be somewhere? How areobjects tied to the space they occupy? In this book Roberto Casati and Achille C.Varzi address some of the fundamental issues in the philosophy of spatialrepresentation. Their starting point is an analysis of the interplay betweenmereology (the study of part/whole relations), topology (the study of spatialcontinuity and compactness), and the theory of spatial location proper. This leadsto a unified framework for spatial representation understood quite broadly as atheory of the representation of spatial entities. The framework is then testedagainst some classical metaphysical questions such as: Are parts essential to theirwholes? Is spatial co-location a sufficient criterion of identity? What (ifanything) distinguishes material objects from events and other spatial entities? Theconcluding chapters deal with applications to topics as diverse as the logicalanalysis of movement and the semantics of maps.