  Accordingly, while Newton's distinctions between absolute and relative time and space provide a conceptual basis for his explicating his distinction between absolute and relative motion, absolute time and space cannot enter directly into empirical reasoning insofar as they are not themselves empirically accessible. In other words, the Principia presupposes absolute time and space for purposes of conceptualizing the aim of measurement, but the measurements themselves are always of relative time and space, and the preferred measures are those deemed to be providing the best approximations to the absolute quantities. Newton never presupposes absolute time and space in his empirical reasoning. Motion in the planetary system is referred to the fixed stars, which are provisionally being taken as an appropriate reference for measurement, and sidereal time is provisionally taken as the preferred approximation to absolute time. Moreover, in the corollaries to the laws of motion Newton specifically renounces the need to worry about absolute versus relative motion in two cases: