I don't think you read anything past what I quoted. I was stating that the specific 'term' was not real
What would be an example of a “real” term?
because it's literally just a 'term' used to describe space + time.
“reality should be regarded as a four-dimensional world.”
Petkov, V. (2009).
Relativity and the Nature of Spacetime (2nd Ed.) Springer.
“The
disappearance of physical time is the second characteristic feature of the relativistic revolution. The notion of time is harder to deal with than the notion of space, and represents a more radical step than the
disappearance of space.”
Rovelli, C. (2006). The disappearance of space and time. in D. Dieks (Ed.)
The Ontology of Spacetime (
Philosophy and Foundations of Physics Vol. I) (pp. 25-36.). Elsevier.
"a physical object is not an enduring spatial hunk of matter, but is, rather, a spatiotemporal hunk of matter. Instead of thinking of matter as filling up regions of space, we should think of matter as filling up regions of spacetime. A physical object is the material content of a region of spacetime."
Heller, M. (1990).
The Ontology of Physical Objects: Four-Dimensional Hunks of Matter. Cambridge University Press.
“spacetime is not a manifold (i.e. a mathematical construct) but the “totality” (the composition in our characterization) of all events...
objects are 4-dimensional bundles of events”
Romero, G. E. (2013). From change to spacetime: an Eleatic journey.
Foundations of science,
18(1), 139-148.
“Hence the physical meaning of length contraction turns out to be profound as Minkowski argued [2, p. 83]—length contraction (and therefore relativity of simultaneity as well) is a manifestation of the four-dimensionality of the world. And indeed, if the world were three-dimensional, this effect would be impossible...
Although length contraction alone is sufficient to settle the issue of the dimensionality of the world consider the following more general argument as well.
The world cannot be three-dimensional since such a world is defined in terms of (i) the prerelativistic division of events into past, present and future, and (ii) the pre-relativistic concept of absolute simultaneity”
Petkov, V. (2007). On the reality of Minkowski space.
Foundations of Physics,
37(10), 1499-1502.
Just like technically numbers aren't real, they're a concept
“That language, that array of theoretical concepts, is appropriate if we conceive of the frame (as we conceive of ourselves) as a spatial thing enduring in time. Spacetime is nowhere in this image.
‘Spacetime’ is not among the concepts in which the space and time explanation may be requested or provided.”
Nerlich, G. (2010). Why spacetime is not a hidden cause: a realist story. in V. Petkov (Ed.)
Space, Time, and Spacetime: Physical and Philosophical Implications of Minkowski's Unification of Space and Time (
Fundamental Theories of Physics Vol. 167) (pp. 181-191). Springer.
"Properly speaking, relativity has taught us that the effective way of thinking about the world in the light of what we have learned so far is to
give up the notions of ‘‘space and time entities’’ entirely."
Rovelli, C. (2006). The disappearance of space and time. in D. Dieks (Ed.)
The Ontology of Spacetime (
Philosophy and Foundations of Physics Vol. I) (pp. 25-36.). Elsevier.
obviously real instances of spacetime exist because our universe is one of them.
Our universe is not an “instance” of spacetime. This would imply other instances of spacetime, which don’t exist.
Please read my post more clearly if you're going to try to insult me.
I did read it carefully (and stating that you are wrong isn’t an insult). You didn’t understand what I was saying. Spacetime is not “anything that has space and time” in any interpretation. The idea that spacetime is like a number, in that “just as numbers aren’t technically real” neither is spacetime. However, this assumes an interpretation of spacetime widely regarded as fundamentally incorrect: spacetime is not an epistemic tool but quite real.
Even if it is just a mathematical model, then your first quote from Wikipedia shows how you are still wrong, as it is a model or concept that “combines space and time” not “a concept of anything which
has both space and time.” It would be a concept (or model) in which space and time are considered together, neither of which are properties that something “has” (other than perhaps the universe, in which case there is only one thing which “has both space and time”).