Objects and Events

TL;DR: The notion of unique location was introduced by Quine as mentioned in this paper, who defined unique location as the location in or occupancy of space and time where an object can be seen to be located in or occupied by an entity in time but not space.

Abstract: entities, which are in neither, and from mental entities on a Cartesian interpretation, which are in time but not space. It is not, however, an evidently sufficient characterization, for events could be reasonably be held to be occupants of space and time as well, provided they are physical events. A clearer view of the specific nature of objects can be got if the different ways in which an item can be said to be located in or to occupy space and time are made explicit. At its simplest the location in or occupancy of space and time is what might be called unique location. A square thing, unlike the property of squareness, cannot be in two places at one time. In view of the fact that a square thing, since it has a shape, must spread over an extended region of space at any time at which it exists, a little further refinement is needed. It could be said that while a particular square thing is at several places at any given time, the whole of it is located only at all of them taken together and that only a I W. V. Quine, Word and Object (Boston, I 960), p. I 7 I 2 W. V. Quine, The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays, revised and enlarged edition (Cambridge, Mass., I976), p. 260. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.17 on Tue, 27 Dec 2016 18:16:44 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms OBJECTS AND EVENTS 201 part of the thing is present at any set of places short of the whole lot. The property of squareness, on the other hand, can be wholly at many different places at one time. It is better to put it like that than to say that, while at any time a particular square thing occupies a continuous tract of space, squareness need not, and usually does not, do so. One reason is that for physics the material things of everyday observation are really swarms of particles at distances from each other that are very large compared to their own sizes. Another is that some observables are observably discontinuous, such as the solar system, the dining-room furniture or a library, when what is meant is the books and not the room in which they are contained. There is another way in which space and time are occupied which is different from the unique, and, one might say, particularizing location just considered. This could be called full occupancy of space and time and consists in being extended through the three dimensions of space and in enduring for a finite period of time. Full occupancy of space is a general characteristic of objects but not of their two-dimensional surfaces or one-dimensional edges. Corresponding on the temporal side to these incomplete, geometrically non-solid spatial items are the instantaneous limits to finite intervals of time, such as the beginning or end of a