Jack Sarfatti
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" Crudely, relationism is the metaphysical doctrine that spaceand time are not material entities existing independently of physical objects.
Space and time emerge, according to this view, as a complex of relations among
things and their changes. There are spatial and temporal relations among the
constituents of the world, but not space and time in themselves. On the contrary,
substantivalism is committed to the independent existence of space and
time, which are considered as material substances or even as things or entities.
Substantivalism is ontological realism about space and time. The debate
between both parties went on during more than 300 years (see the books by
Jammer 2012 and Friedman 1983 for arguments supporting both positions)."
On the ontology of spacetime
Substantivalism, relationism, eternalism, and emergence
Gustavo E. Romero
Independent of quantum corrections in the Bohmian sense, classical field theory says that the space-time geometry is physical field independent of matter sources. For example, de Sitter vacuum solutions, Wheeler wormhole Einstein-Rosen bridges, Kerr vacuum solution etc. This is because of the nonlinearity of Einstein's Lagrangian density. The classical gravitational field has the same ontic status as the electromagnetic field in classical physics.
True, a matter source Tuv will distort the independently existing gravity field, but that is besides the point. Also I reread Steven Weinberg's 1989 paper on the cosmological constant problem and he is very clear on this point. Also same as Wheeler, Weinberg says Mach's principle only applies to the pattern of LIFs and has nothing to do with the rest masses of particles.