THE CONCEPT OF SPACE: THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS IN PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND LINGUISTICS
THE CONCEPT OF SPACE: THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS IN PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND LINGUISTICS

Summary/Abstract: The idea of space is central in human understanding but remains a subject of debate. While it seems straightforward, spatiality functions as an ontological category, a mental framework, and a linguistic system all at once. This article offers an interdisciplinary review of spatiality across philosophy, psychology, and linguistics, highlighting key epistemological shifts from classical metaphysics to modern embodied and cognitive approaches. Philosophical views range from Aristotelian relationality and Newtonian absolutism to Leibnizian relational ontology, Kantian transcendental idealism, and phenomenological ideas of lived space. Psychological research has evolved from constructivist and representational models to embodied, enactive, and dynamic systems theories. In linguistics, especially cognitive linguistics, spatial structures are fundamental to conceptual organization, metaphor, and grammar. The article concludes that these perspectives form a diverse epistemological landscape in which spatiality emerges through the interaction of embodiment, cognition, language, and culturally situated models of meaning.

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