O Nature, Where Art Thou?
Abstract
Where does what happens happen in a quantum system? The standard textbook formulation of quantum mechanics provides a strange, imprecise and yet successful-in-practice answer to this question. In the struggle to unify our understanding of gravity with quantum theory, though, the textbook answer no longer suffices, and an alternative approach is needed. The Feynman Sum Over Histories approach provides an alternative that is particularly suited to quantum gravity because the Sum Over Histories and General Relativity are built on the same fundamental concepts of `event' and `history'.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2601.02140,
title = {O Nature, Where Art Thou?},
author = {Fay Dowker},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.02140},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
6 Pages. A slightly different version of this article was published as "Unifying gravity and quantum theory requires better understanding of time'', Nature 645, 32-34 (2025)