English

Book Review: 'Background Independence in Classical and Quantum Gravity', by James Read

History and Philosophy of Physics 2024-10-03 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

This is a review of James Read's insightful book, Background Independence in Classical and Quantum Gravity. The book introduces various notions of background-independence which it then makes precise, and uses to make verdicts about background-independence on a wide range of examples of spacetime theories in both classical and quantum gravity. This short book is, in several ways, a worthy example of how technical philosophy of physics ought to be done. I first discuss the content, then raise a number points where I disagree with the book.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2410.00935,
  title  = {Book Review: 'Background Independence in Classical and Quantum Gravity', by James Read},
  author = {Sebastian De Haro},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.00935},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

9 pages. To appear in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

R2 v1 2026-06-28T19:04:13.358Z