Space in ancient Greek is conceived in four terms. They are chaos(Hesiod), chora(Plato), topos(Aristotle) and kenon(the atomists and the Stoics). chaos is a mythical place within which things can happen. chora is the place for becoming. Within chora t...
Space in ancient Greek is conceived in four terms. They are chaos(Hesiod), chora(Plato), topos(Aristotle) and kenon(the atomists and the Stoics). chaos is a mythical place within which things can happen. chora is the place for becoming. Within chora the Demiurge begin to create. topos is a proper place for a particular thing. It has some power to limit. So there is no need to invoke a deific regulator. kenon is the open space required for atoms' random motions or an interval unoccupied by body.
In the Middle Ages, the concept of space is emancipated from the concept of Aristotle's place. For Crescas space is a great continuum of infinite dimensions, an immovable void, ready to receive matter. After the condemnation of Tempier, the infinite space is imagined with a series of bold thinking-experiment which attempted to reinstate the omnipotence of God. The space is identical with God's very being as immense beyond measure. It is imaginal-speculative and divine space. Space as infinite dimension gradually got primacy over place.
In Renaissance, concepts of space are come from perspectiva space and poly-world space. Perspectiva space is constituted with mathematical and geometrical laws, light and darkness, multy colorful images by Alberty and Leonardo da Vinci. Multy-world space is mediated by Cusanus and Bruno as the universe space that center and circumference are not in space, and in which innumerable world spaces exist with each dignity and value. Theories of space are a try for haman emancipation from theological elucidation to space. This emancipation is not an action to neglect a theological thought but to establishment an new thought for space.
In Modern, concepts of space are established as natural space and cognitional space. Natural space is a term in which Newton' absolute space and Descartes' extension space are integrated. By it, space with measurable shape is to be extended really in front of human’s experiential eyes. cognitional space is a term in which Leibniz' relative space and Kant' transcendental space are integrated. By it, space is only a form and a method of human to construct world and to understand nature. It is a contribution of modern theories of space that they have gotten space familiar with human by a expound of a relation of space and human, and formulated homogeneity and geometrical application of space.
The present age is intensively concerned with the space of living and dwelling in the respect of enjoyment. The important research in this tendency ist the phenomenological approach to space of life-world(Husserl, Merleau-Ponty), anthropology of space(Bollnow), symbolical-imaginary topology (Cassirer, Bachelard), psyscho-analytical study of space(Binswanger, Minkowski). Our study made a phenomenological description of haus, the compass direction, decenteration, way, etc. and discussed genetic-typological consideration of space(hodological space, space of action and expression, space of day and night, space of mood, space of community). In addition our study deepened the space of life by inquiry about the space of dwelling that deals with the concept of spacial mood.
Two mainstreams of contemporary understanding of space are anthropological and existential space theory and heterotopology of postmodernism. Heidegger's thinking of space plays a mediate role between these streams. Heidegger criticize the understanding of anthropological space, d.i. ontical concept of space, and emphasize ontological character of space. Space is not the present thing that ist isolated from a human being, but is understood as the constitution of the there-being(Dasein) in the world. Moreover the space in Heidegger's post-thinking is considered as fourfold-world(das Gevierte), time-play-space, poetical-ethical dwelling through space-metaphor. This thought named topology of the Being is connecting to postmodern thinker, who deconstruct subject-existential-anthropolanthropological space.