Where does event collide?

In relativity, an event is a single point in spacetime, fixed by when and where it happens: a time together with a place, written as four coordinates. Einstein's 1905 Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper treated an event as the reading of a clock at a definite location, and Minkowski's 1908 address Raum und Zeit, published the following year, recast such events as points of a four-dimensional geometry, each a 'world-point' with time as a fourth axis. The referent is a bare location in the fabric of time and space, carrying no probability and founding nothing, unlike a set of outcomes assigned a chance or a rupture that opens a truth.[1][2]

Unit

A single spacetime point, given as one time and three space coordinates

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Located operationally by the reading of a clock at rest at a definite place, and drawn as a point on a spacetime diagram

In probability theory, an event is a set of possible outcomes drawn from the sample space, to which a number between zero and one is assigned as its probability. Kolmogorov's 1933 Grundbegriffe der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung defined events as the measurable subsets of the sample space, closed under complement and countable union, and fixed the axioms a probability measure must satisfy. The referent is a collection of outcomes carrying a chance, not a point in spacetime and not a philosophical break: 'rolling an even number' is one such event, and on a fair die its probability is one half.[3]

Unit

One measurable subset of the sample space, weighted by a probability

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Specified as a member of a sigma-algebra of subsets and assigned a value by a probability measure obeying the Kolmogorov axioms

In continental philosophy, an event is something that ruptures an established situation and cannot be reduced to a plain fact or a state of affairs. Deleuze's 1969 Logique du sens treated the event as a pure becoming that plays over bodies and their states without being reducible to them, and Badiou's 1988 L'être et l'événement recast the event as a break that opens a new truth and calls a subject to hold to it. The referent is a rupture in the order of being, neither a point located in spacetime nor a set of outcomes carrying a probability.[4][5]

Unit

One rupture in a situation, named after the fact by those who stay faithful to it

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Not measured: it is argued for philosophically and recognised only through the becoming or the truth-procedure it opens