Towards a New Theory of Gravity, Mass, Matter and Space

It’s time for a more unified physical mechanics, one in which matter is not arbitrarily separated from space and gravity, but part and parcel of it

In his formulation of General Relativity, Einstein wrote:

We make a distinction hereafter between “gravitational field” and “matter” in this way, that we denote everything but the gravitational field as “matter.” Our use of the word therefore includes not only matter in the ordinary sense, but the electromagnetic field as well.

The definition of matter as everything that isn’t the gravitational field is a logical quandary, raising the same questions Aristotle and other classical philosophers raised in regards to atoms and vacuum. If matter has a finite size, can the gravitational field and matter overlap and exist in the same location simultaneously? And what is the gravitational field then, if its only claim to existence is that it dictates the motion of matter? The apparent uselessness of absolute space prompted Newton’s contemporary, Gottfried Leibniz, to joke that Newton regarded space as “an organ which God makes use of to perceive things by.” If Leibniz had been alive to see the advent of General Relativity, he may have made a similar remark: that space, in Einstein’s vision, is merely an organ which God makes use of to move things by.