This article is not a comprehensive treatise on geometry. It is intended rather to be a kind of introduction to those aspects of geometry which the physicist finds basic to describing the struc-ture of the universe. A. The Geometry of Space. 1. Point and Distance. Like time and matter-energy, it is not possible to define space in terms of simpler physical entities.
Space simply exists.
It can be defined only in terms of its properties. Those properties are what we call geometry . Two of these properties are the concept of point and the shortest distance between two points . In order to specify points and distances, it is necessary to use material objects. Nevertheless it is taken for granted that space and its geometry exist independently of the presence of matter.