Interesting… perhaps I will look at it in more detail later. These fringe theories don’t strike me as particularly sophisticated.
What I have noticed, is that certain individuals who dispute relativity, end up with a concept of an absolute ether or some such filling all of space… I find it hard to distinguish in causal or consequential terms the difference between someone asserting existence of “absolute space”: a thing filling the universe, and someone asserting “space” itself is relational BUT there is this other thing called “ether” filling the universe…
I’m not sure what you are referring to as a fringe theory.
If it is circular time theory, the reference document was removed from the thread prior to my discovery of this forum.
It may have been Dr. Binswanger that mentioned Miss Rand referenced it in a conversation, and that he wished he had asked her more about it. It is a “secret” she took with her.
As to space, there is no universal Cartesian coordinate system. Both “space” in your first sense, and “ether” in the second are treat as “things” as you aptly prefaced them with. How does this differ from taking two abstractions “space” and “time”, hyphenating them together into “space-time” and then treating them as if they can be “bent”, “dilated” etc?