On the Trouble with Physics

Since the time of the ancient Greeks, the world has been under the sway of the philosophy of atomism, which holds that the parts are prior to the whole, and so that the world is an empty receptacle in which material objects are placed like furniture in an empty room. This philosophy however contradicts the General Theory of Relativity according to which the fundamental condition of the universe involves no space and time and therefore no matter, and has numerous undesirable consequences. It is argued here that the alternative conception -that the whole is prior to the parts, and that space disrupts light rather than the other way around- coheres with theory and with observation, and that it is supported by mathematical principles by reference to which several problems of physics can be solved.