Manifesting Space and Time

Temporal and spatial relations are often regarded as paradigmatic categorical properties that provide a counterexamples to the claim that all fundamental natural properties powers (potencies)—properties that are dispositional in na- ture/essence. In this paper I consider the consequences for this debate of think- ing that a good physical theory should be background-independent. I propose that the conception of time and space not as a background but as an active com- ponent of the physical universe help show that temporal and spatial properties and relations need not be considered as necessarily categorical.