Geometric Possibility

This is a neat little book (138 pages without appendices, approximately 200 with). It focuses on one aspect of the debate between substantivalism and relationalism about space. (Belot discusses things in terms of space rather than spacetime, explaining this choice at the end.) As Belot convincingly argues in chapter 2, the relationalist should be a modal relationalist, positing, in the spatial facts about a world, not just the actual configurations of material objects but the possible ones too. Others have argued that the relationalist should go modal, without tackling the difficult question of exactly what kind of modality is involved. Geometric Possibility is a sustained look at what this kind of modality could be. Belot explores three different accounts of this notion, which fall in line with three different accounts of laws. The result is a book that has interesting things to say not only about modal relationalism and different...