First, space has certain topological properties. The most important of these is continuity; that is, space can be subdivided in such a way that every point has a “neighborhood” that, no matter how many times it is subdivided or reduced, contains an infinite number of other points.

Newton, Huygens, Leibniz, Berkeley, Maxwell, Kant, Mach, Poincaré―these are names to conjure with. The fact that not one of them was able to provide a coherent theory of the phenomena of classical rotation is at first blush astonishing.