These eleven essays were published between 1979 and 1991 in the following order:

‘What can geometry explain?’ (1979) British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 30: 69–83.

‘Is curvature intrinsic to physical space?’ (1979) Philosophy of Science 46: 439–58.

‘How to make things have happened’ (1979) Canadian Journal of Philosophy 9: 1–22.

‘Can time be finite?’ (1981) Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 62: 227–39.

‘Simultaneity and convention in special relativity’ (1982) in Robert McLaughlin (ed.), What? Where? When? Why? Dordrecht, Reidel: 129–53.

‘Special relativity is not based on causality’ (1982) British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 33: 361–82.

‘What ontology can be about: the spacetime example’ (1985) Australasian Journal of Philosophy 63: 127–42.

‘On learning from the mistakes of positivists’ (1989) in J. E. Fensted, I. T. Frolov and R. Hipinen (eds.), Logic Methodology and Philosophy of Science. Amsterdam, Elsevier: vol. VIII, pp. 459–77.

‘Motion and change of distance’ (1989) in J. Heil (ed.), Cause, Mind and Reality. Dordrecht, Kluwer: 221–34.

‘How Euclidean geometry has misled metaphysics’ (1991) Journal of Philosophy 88: 169–89.

‘Holes in the Hole Argument’ (1993) in D. Prawitz and D. Westersthål (eds.), Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. Dordrecht, Kluwer: vol. IX.

I acknowledge the help of the original publishers of these papers whose permission to reprint them here made this volume possible. I acknowledge also the help and stimulus of Andrew Westwell-Roper and his permission to reprint §2, ‘What ontology can be about’, which we wrote jointly.

I have changed several of the essays in minor ways to update them in some respects.

Birgit Tauss, Karel Curran and Margaret Rawlinson have helped in various ways in preparing the papers for republication.