Empty Spaces: Symposium at Tampere University (12 December 2025)

In 1638, René Descartes wrote to his friend Marin Mersenne that “it is . . . just as impossible that a space should be empty as that a mountain should be without a valley” (qtd. in Skirry 2008, 118). Yet for much of the history of Western science and philosophy, “space was . . . viewed as a mere background or an empty container in which the unfolding of events over some durée could take place” (2017, 2). Similarly, as James Kneale notes, space has often been “taken for granted as a category of existence or experience,” assumed to be an empty void preceding whatever fills it (2009, 43). Yet the spatial turn marked a shift towards perceiving space as a dynamic and active force shaped by – and in turn shaping – social practices, power relations, and historical processes. 

Half a century later, we are invited to reconsider the concept of empty space. What does it mean for a space to be called “empty” in literature, geography, philosophy, or urban life? Can space be truly empty, or is it always already filled with sensory perceptions, meanings, and social relations? Or did we perhaps ban emptiness too early from the accepted critical vocabulary of spatial studies? Discussing “empty spaces” may be particularly timely in an era when scholarly and cultural perspectives are directed towards plenitude – spaces conceived as full, occupied, and meaningful.