Abstract

In 1768 Immanuel Kant presented an argument showing the necessity of absolute space, i.e. substantivalism in contrast to relationalism, based on the property of handedness. While there is large consensus about the fallacy of Kant’s argument, a more recent debate exists – mainly stimulated by John Earman – about the status of the Kantian argument in view of modern physics and its fundamentally built-in parity violation, which leads to a preferred handedness. According to Earman the relationalist has no means to distinguish one handedness in the cosmos without reference to an absolute structure of space. After recapitulating the historical background of the Newton/Leibniz debate on the ontological status of space as well as the Kantian argument, this paper offers a systematic consideration of arguments about handedness in modern physics. The goal is to show that “Earman’s challenge” can be rejected.